Wind turbines used to absorb a power surplus?

Not convinced about that. Even with little kids, its obvious which ones have the mechanical and electrical aptitude and interest.

That's overstated with the railways particularly.

Dunno, we currently have a Brahman in another group who is into both the theory and physical product, in his case high tech rail guns. Corse he is a complete nutter who claims to have invented what google does so well, believes that Einstein got it wrong and that the moon landing never happened and was faked.

No idea how good his rail gun is, but our military isnt interested.

I wouldnt bet that.

I worked for 21 years for a large electric utility in Texas.

They should install batteries to charge up when demand is low.

When the batteries are full, they can shut down those wind turbines until demand is back up.

That would reduce wear and tear on the wind turbines because they are not continuously running.

Andy

You almost have it right Andy -

- huge storage banks are being built to charge-up during low load periods - so that they can be used for peak demand periods .

one example :

It's hard to beat chemical explosives for energy density.

It fun, tragic fun, to interview the average EE recent grad. Whiteboard a 10 volt battery and a 9K:1K voltage divider, and ask for the drop across the 1K. Panic.

Or ask them about their senior project. That can be hilarious.

The FIRE people are extremely good at sawing off the branch they're sitting on. Every time they're rescued they promise they'll never do stupid things again. That lasts a few years if we're lucky.

thanks for the link. John T.

Great reading. :-)

Andy

Yes. After Independence India chose the Bullet for the Army's motorcycle. As years went on the bikes were assembled in India, but eventually they bought the tooling in the '60s. Over the years the quality improved and they now are using new designs after they bought Harris Performance. In a turnaround the 650cc's are now the best selling bike in the UK.

British Royal Enfield closed in 1970.

Unlike Ewan McGregor's films, there was no support group. He demonstrates the technique for some of the shots. Ride up the pass, prop the camera up, ride down, and ride up again to catch it of film.

They're trying. The government is a little more focused than Biden's attempts. Enough firms are getting nervous about TSMC that they may be able to attract significant investments.

My boss is Indian and an adequate driver as far as I know. I was selling a

Sadly you're right. I've interviewed several recent CS graduates over the years and wasn't impressed by most. The one who did impress me got her degree for University of Dublin. She completed a real world project keeping track of bicycles.

I'm encouraged by the Maker movement. The public library has an area with

I did some work with Package Machinery in Springfield MA. I was fascinated with what they could accomplish with cams, toggles, levers and so forth, all mechanical.

I need an Rpi coder or two. I think I'll hang out in some maker spaces, rather than going the usual employment search route.

Years ago I did a system for a GE environmental test setup with an AT managing 12 XTs that were controlling the test harnesses. All DOS and a homegrown communications bus since networking wasn't even a gleam in MS's eye. It would be a lot easier now with XBees, RFM69s, and other options.

One of my projects would be hilarious. It was a mind experiment to design an automated information retrieval system for a library. Of course we assume the information would be microfiche.

About 50 years later the library installed a kiosk that would find and deliver your desired DVD and I thought 'well, it finally happened'. We also thought someone would write a decent chess program in FORTRAN IV if they had a free weekend.

As I mentioned in another post I only interviewed one candidate who had completed a real life project for the Dublinbikes system. The rest were 'duh?'. The Masters level people were the worst, going on endlessly about their thesis that had no practical application as far as I could tell.

There was something on the news a few days ago. It has been 40 years since Cds came to the U.S.