12 Small Windmills Put To the Test In Holland

[TheOldFellow]

Yet. No duty at all on air, but don't hold your breath on Wednesday.

R.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Don't see an easy way though..tax the batteries perhaps? Hardly conducive to 'green' policies..

Not easy to tag electrons either to see which socket they came out of..

[Dave Plowman (News)]

At the moment. But if electric cars become common, they'll have to find a way of taxing them.

Likely a mileage charge - that could be used for IC engined cars too.

[Huge]

I wouldn't.

Both of the ones on Top Gear broke.

There are much better cars for less money.

[The Natural Philosopher]

JC can break anything.

But they aren't electric..

[The Natural Philosopher]

There's a thought. Your MOT costs vary depending on the odometer readings..

Or tyres..tax tyres ..the more you wear the tyres out the more you must wear the road out!!

[Huge]

You don't want a (battery) electric car. Definitely not at the moment and probably not ever. It would be better to use the energy from your nuclear power stations to make liquid fuels of some description.

[Jules]

Hasn't it been talked about anyway - with the added 'benefit' that the gov't would know where any vehcile had been at any given moment in time...

[Stephen Howard]

That would make it expensive for people who live in rural areas ( no change there then ) and effectively pay people to sit in city traffic jams for hours on end.

People would fit harder tyres, which would chew up the road surface even more.

Both sound like excellent ideas that any right-thinking gov'mint should adopt immediately...

Regards,

[Dave Plowman (News)]

'Road pricing' could be varied according to traffic density.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Not really., conversion efficiency is pretty crap, and lithium based=20 batteries are (just) good enough. Esp with dynamic braking.

[The Natural Philosopher]

), the average wind velocity during these 12 months

Thts technically feasible, but unproven. See adams atomic engines.

Yep Sellafield is the worst current installation..everywhere else is as=20 clean as a whistle.

[The Natural Philosopher]

well that's all right., They are leccy cars so apart from listening to Ipods and keeping their tootsies warm (or cold) they ain't using any power or wearing any roads out!

Hmm. Thts a puzzler that is. Nit sure how true that really is.

And prolly will once leccy cars get over 10%...

[Jules]

Hmm, the Soviets managed it for use with some of their missle launch vehicles in remote locations, but then binned them all post-Chernobyl.

I tried to hunt down a type number, but Google's light on details - various references as above, plus a few images, but nothing that enables me to quote any concrete specs. How well they worked in practice is anyone's guess, but it seems that they *did* exist...

cheers

J.

[nightjar]

...

IME it is the other way around. When my late father and I went on motor rallies, we fitted soft compound tyres that wore out in about 5000 miles, but they grip they gave was like driving on tram lines.

Colin Bignell

[nightjar]

That's not really the point. It is the only electric car about that offers anything like the performance I would want from one. I'd buy a Tatra 87 too, just because it looks odd, if I had spare cash to do so. As a car, I suspect it is terrible.

Colin Bignell

[Andy Wade]

The theoretical maximum fraction is 16/27 or 59.3% - hardly "tiny." This fraction is known at the Betz coefficient[1], after Albert Betz[2] who determined it in 1919. Practical wind turbine designs can extract around 70 to 80% of this maximum [3], i.e. the overall power coefficient is broadly in the range 40 to 50%. IOW getting on for half the power in the wind can be collected.

[1] The generation of electricity by wind power, E. W. Golding & R. I. Harris, publ. E. F. Spon, 1976 edition, p.192

[Owain]

Well, they can whack the VAT rate on domestic fuel back up to 15% / 17.5%

Then there could be a fossil fuel levy on the generating and distributing companies.

Would all help a bit.

Owain

[Andy Champ]

Did Muphry strike? 1172kWH/sq m/day is about 100kW/sq metre. I think I'd have noticed that when I was out for a walk earlier.

(I always use 1kW/sq metre normal to the sun as a rule of thumb)

Andy

[andrew]

I know little about battery technology but thermal cracking of steam with a catalyst is reckoned to be a viable fission technology. The temperature needs whacking up a bit above what AGR's are expected to run at but I think this is mainly over a concern of the boiler containment strength. The plan would be co production of synthetic fuel and electricity and possibly the ability to modulate the proportions at times of peak or off peak electricity demand.

Something similar is or was done to produce an anti knock lead replacement compound for petrol but using coal as the thermal source.

Thermal efficiencies of simple industrial processes are reasonably high, town gas and coke from coal was typically around 85% and presumably this could have been better in co cycle with a steam turbine.

AJH not a fan of nuclear power but...