Thats part of the design strategy, yes. The system is using minimal cost low performance collectors, and is trying to make the most of these outdated low performance panels.
It would be fair to ask why though. Such panels have their uses, but not as the only panel type in a small domestic system. One would have to have endless time and no money to consider such a system.
sounds true for low end panels
To give a decent explanation of solar HW it should really adress the main options, with their noticeably different characteristics and strategies.
Sounds like an unnecessary spend to me. SHW is generally marginal, so very sensitive to system cost.
You might try Ubuntu or Mint. It runs direct from cd without altering the win install in any way.
We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember The Natural Philosopher saying something like:
We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember Andy Dingley saying something like:
I suspect the old trail-blazers are now resentful of others coming along and jumping on 'their' bandwagon, now it's become a lot more mainstream. The old 'not invented here' syndrome.
It's not just an engineering problem. He makes assumptions like putting lots more hydro in Scotland, and wind farms off thw welsh coast (among others). Without considering that these won't necessarily solve _his_ problem in _england_. All that will happen is the Scots (or Welsh, or Cornish or whoever gets the investment) will then say "OK you want electricity from _our_ renewables, let's talk money..."
On Sat, 16 Jan 2010 22:21:33 GMT someone who may be pete wrote this:-
That's mildly amusing.
Some years ago the (English based) Regulator changed the charging system for transmission charges, to favour production near consumption. That's a very good way to arrange things, where the fuel is expensive and/or finite such as nuclear and coal. Transmission losses mean wasted fuel.
However, they applied the same regime to renewables, where the fuel is free and infinite [1]. That makes no sense, as transmission losses (at the values in the UK) are not a huge problem for renewables. Losses will mean a little more water is needed in the reservoir, or a little larger wind farm is needed, but these are minor compared to the benefits of siting them in the best areas.
[1] ignoring things like biomass where there are costs in making the fuel and which are better near fuel and electricity consumption.
On Sat, 16 Jan 2010 22:21:33 GMT someone who may be pete wrote this:-
Forgot to add that the English are already "at risk" from Scottish electricity barons holding them to ransom.
Government officials and SSEB semi-officials lumbered Scotland with some white elephants, the most well known of which is Torness. Paying for that white elephant is one of the reasons why electricity in Southern Scotland is amongst the most expensive in the UK. Leaving that aside, most of the electricity it generates, on those occasions that it works at all, is exported to England.
It isn't just Torness. When Sizewell B failed followed quickly by the (partly loaded) Longannet (and there were other less well publicised things going on at the same time) lights went out in England.
It is written by a Greenie with a brain, and desperately tries to make the green case, and of course fails. Because he has a brain, and can do sums. And is intellectually honest.
Qualities that Dynamo Dave lacks.
Ultimately his 'green Britain' turns into a country dominated by alternative energy installations. every square inch is covered in windmills, tidal barriers, storage lakes, pylons..it is the transformation of the whole landscape, into one giant factory to produce energy for humans in towns to heat their baked beans with.
And then he pops in a chapter on nuclear which basically remarks without much further comment 'or 100 nuclear power stations'
The COST of the industrialised landscape covered in every solar wind and tidal power technology known to man versus the 100 nuclear power stations, is never investigated.
Neither is the more telling cost benefit equation..is it in fact cheaper to deal with the effects of global warming, than to attempt to stop it without much hope of so doing?
Its always easier, politically, to point to 'factors beyond our control' and muddle on, than tell the country that unless they are prepared to limit themselves to e.g. one child per couple, and drop the population to around 6M in three generations, there isn't a cats chance in hell of making renewable energy give us anything better than a lifestyle that a
13th century peasant wouldn't have chosen as an alternative.
yes, its amazing how much that one little square kilometer of waste land on teh suffolk coast contributes to the UKs electricity, compared with ALL the windmills in their thousands of square miles, that regularly stop turning.
The scottish position is simple.
Play teh green card, build shitloads of crappy windpower stations, that rely on subsidised power lines to carry them to the rest of the UK, and take the subsidised price back into the scottish coffers.
i.e. get English money to build run and subsidise them, and take all the profit in scotland.
while wearing a green jacket and adopting a holier than thou attitude.
The means of generation is completely irrelevant, the costs of transmission are very significant. You can't site generation in the arse end of nowhere like Scotland and expect it to be transmitted to Mr and Mrs Green Consumer in London for free. The infrastructure costs a huge amount of money, so to all the dipshit windfarm speculators it's a case of either pay up or you *won't* EVER get connected.
There are a number of opportunities for low cost connections to the grid in England, the reason for that is pure economics at work. The infrastructure is already there and capacity is available because of reducing/changing industrial demand. Scotland is by comparison on the end of a bit of wet string and if that turdbrain Salmond really wants his beloved 'nation' to be a shining star of renewable energy then he better start funding the electricity grid by raising funds via an additional income and corporation tax in Scotland. One big stumbling block though, a rate of 100% for 1000 years wouldn't fund it.
So the sooner we start building nukes in England on an massive scale using semi- mass production line techniques the better. Leaving windmills to a) those truly off-grid in the arse end of nowhere and b) sandcastles on the beach.
Siting these nukes in urban areas very close to the consumers would be by far the best option, forget existing locations on the coast that are prone to climate change considerations. What I'd really I'd love is a truly local scale nuke, one per village, a few MW of free district heating and endless electricity with next to bugger all pollution. We could even heat the roads to de-ice them, and heat and light greenhouses to grow food all the year round. It'd make a big improvement on the wind farm that does bugger all most of the time and is a huge blot on the landscape.
Meanwhile leaving Scotland to rot in perpetuity and become the new Iceland would please many people elsewhere in the UK who are pig sick of funding those north of the border at the expense of our own.
?country=GB&site=TORNESS&units=&refno=23B&opyear=2008&link=HOT2008, 82.89% and 88.23% on a 615MWe output over 8760 hours. Significantly higher than ANY wind farm EVER built ANYWHERE in the UK
No, some load was lost in some industrial premises in England. No lights went out anywhere. The vast majority of consumers didn't notice any problem at all.
planned as a credible event, the actual loss of demand in the circumstances was only around 500MW, the overwhelming majority *were* industrial consumers. 'No lights went out anywhere' was perhaps stretching the truth very slightly but it was the experience of many tens of millions of people in the UK that day.
A significant contribution to the low frequency problem was embedded generation that disconnected at the first signs of a frequency excursion below 49.5Hz unlike the large coal, gas, nuclear and hydro generation that will remain connected to around 47Hz. The vast majority of the embedded generation that disconnected was from wind turbines, proving again what a stinking pile of shit they really are.
Like I said, the facts clearly support my statement that the vast majority of consumers didn't notice *any* problem at all.
Anyway please don't let a minor point about your low duration brownout get in the way of fuelling a good argument with a deranged Scotsman like Hansen :)
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