On the surface, yes, until he learned that it wasn't just the local bobby cycling down to the station, but all done via the equivalent of the police national computer having access to other systems.
The service was useful on this occasion of course, it's the notion of the computer holding data about people's movements when crime is not suspected or involved that he didn't like.
In the other case the point was about the psychology of the neighbour who would rather call the police than discuss the issue amicably himself. It wasn't an issue that he thought that they might stick one on him, purely that he wanted the police to deliver disappointing news.
It is a mixed up society. Bern has one of the worst hard drugs problems in Europe. In a park next to the parliament building, children can't play because of large numbers of needles in the grass. The problem has been (neatly) addressed by arranging rooms on the other side of the square where junkies can go to inject themselves.
Periodically, there is a vote to throw out the auslander workers because of a fear of cultural dilution. Then it is realised that the economy won't run without them.
If Blindgit gets his way we'll all be monitored 24x7 via our ID cards and webcams on every street corner. We can't have those nasty citizens going about their every day lives without the nanny state looking after their interests can we?
That'll be after the police force have been re-assigned to be part of the Inland Revenue division for collecting taxes (speed cameras etc).
The UK has more street cameras than any other country and yet street crime persists and litter is dropped willy nilly to the point the Uk is the filthiest country in western Europe after Ireland. What would it be like without them? Remember the baby Bulger case in 1993. They tracked the boys who did it, most of their walk home, by private cameras on company front doors facing streets and police cameras, although after the event. Even the abduction was recorded. Rather reactive than proactive.
Watch out for another government-led fiasco coming your way real soon now. Remember the passport crisis under Jack Straw when he was h*mo secretary? The Pathway project at the post offices? The child tax credits under Primarolo?
Oh yes, there's some fun to be had with ID cards yet.....
And worryingly the police already had the databases and computer systems and had had for a long time, but that didn't stop those two kids being murdered in Soham.
OK but not everyone lives in old terraces or runs their washing machine several times a day, and I'm sure people run their heating at other times of the day than early in the morning. It's not that much of an inconvenience to wait a few hours longer for your washing or drying or dishes to finish.
With a Microgen you generate 1.1kW of power at gas prices (1.5p/kWh) when the boiler is running. To maximise returns you'd use a thermal store to even out heating demand and keep the boiler running continiously while the heating is on.
With net metering you 'make' 5.5p/KWh (7 - 1.5p) on the 1.1Kw you generate while it's running, by reducing your electricity bill accordingly. So if your heating runs for the equivalent of three months a year you'd save 0.055 * 1.1 * 24 * 365/4 = £132 a year on your electricity bill by generating 2400kWh.
Without net metering it depends on how much of this power you can use to offset your load on the domestic supply. If you can use 75% of it you would save £100 a year on your electricity bill.
It all depends on the Govt, it they oppose net metering it will not happen. Their argument against it was that people without net metering would subsidise those that have it, which imho is not true and is a p*ss poor attitude to take.
"Andy Hall" wrote | - In an apartment building it is very typical to have a | communal washing machine ... the detergent chute had | better be spotless afterwards.
And wiped round the door seal I would hope. Nothing wrong with consideration for others. I'd expect the Dutch, Germans, and Scandinavians are the same.
| The neighbour explained that he was on good terms with them | and that because of that he didn't want to say anything to | them that might spoil the friendship. Therefore he asked | the police to deliver the bad news.
Maybe I'm socially disfunctional, but that doesn't seem unsensible to me.
| When he went to the police on his return, it turned out that had | checked with the railway and determined that he had bought a ticket | to Zurich airport.... | This is all very nice of them, but as he felt, a trifle intrusive on | his privacy.
No more intrusive, but rather more efficient, than what the British police can already do with airline tickets. Given the Swiss attitudes to national security, it's hardly surprising. At least their police could be bothered.
| The message went on to say that he shouldn't worry because | the policeman had been able to climb in, lock the window and | leave through the front door.
I bet the polisman even wiped his footprints off the windowsill before leaving.
No, it didn't: and the Chief Constable of Humberside is eating large doses of humble pie after his initial blustering that it was all the fault of that mean and nasty Data Protection Act which said his force was not allowed to record their suspicions. (As we've already been through, it firmly *does* so allow, requiring though that their nature and source be recorded alongside them, to allow the data-as-a-whole to be accurate rather than misleading.) Turns out he had a natter with the deputy Information Commissioner about this area a while back, and is now taking full and sole responsibility for misunderstanding what he was told.
Lining up next s-tin in hand, in the queue for servings of pie, humble, for the eating of, is the Chief Constable of Cambridgeshire: whose force yesterday admitted that the fax they were supposed to have sent to Humberside asking for a background check on Huntley might not have been actually in the "paper with marks on generated at the far end" *sent*, as such; rather that a note of the *intention* to send such a fax appears in Cambridgeshire's records, but that (whether through an error of automation or of human procedure-following we'll hear on Monday) it now seems that no fax message was actually sent to Humbleside. Oops.
As an overall principle which covers both paedophile background checks and many of the spurious claims made by Blunkett about the national ID card scheme, it seems that there are far too few statistically and operationally literate people willing to bear hard truths unto Government. If you're trying to set up a system (manual, computerised - doesn't matter) to detect a rare event (record of unsavoury->dangerous interest in kids as objects of sexual interest, terrorist activity, claiming benefit under multiple assumed identities) among a sea of 'normal' events (teachers and others working with kids *without* sinister motives, non-terrorists, benefit claimants using a single, non-assumed identity), you're guaranteed a very high proportion of false alarms: and the more you desensitise your testing, the likelier that the rare things you want to spot will not trigger the alarm either. Add to that general statistical truth the *motivations* of the don't-want-to-be-spotteds (deliberate manipulation of the system, lying, cheating, hiding, etc) and - in the case of 'normal' people running a system as just one part of a 'normal' job, rather than specialised national-security or fraud-detection operations where target profiling is someone's fulltime job that they're passionately interested in and rewarded for getting right - and you're simply *bound* to have produced what Bruce Schneier in his fine recent book 'Beyond Fear' calls 'security theatre': an illusion of Doing Something About The Problem, which addresses political needs (following the politician's syllogism: (a) Something Must Be Done, (b) This is Something, ergo (c) I Shall Do It) but expends finite resources in a vacuously unproductive manner.
Rant over. We now return you to your scheduled programming concerning over-100%-efficiencies, land taxes, magnetic water softeners, and the conspiracy to kill Princess Di and Dodi...
OK I'll bite: it gets close to the old 11+ question about two cars on a two lap, 2 mile, race, the first car has an average speed of 60mph throughout, the second has an average speed of 30mph for the first lap, how fast must it average over the second lap to win?
Ignoring the complications of back feeding the grid and just looking at possibilities of supplying your own power from fuel at typical domestic prices. Taking the earlier proposition that there was no value on the wasted heat.
A large coal fired power station pays GBP1/GJ= for its fuel, the steam turbine has an O+M cost of 0.1p/kWhr(e) and puts electricity into the grid at around 2p/kWhr, it reaches you at about 6p/kWhr plus a standing charge. On average you'll consume this at 1kW?? peaking at
23kW??
Now that 23:1 turndown is quite a target, even accounting for maintaining a rolling reserve (ticking over ready for demand).
So assuming an efficient heat engine running on the cheapest fuel (gas at 1.4p/kWhr(t)??) what conversion is likely? I can only use the figures I have from an existing installation. This is a 10kVA diesel genset which has an average demand of 2kW(e) and has an average thermal conversion of 20%, I know it is possible to do better but these are the figure we achieve running 8/5/250. Ignoring the difficulty of running a CI engine on natural gas this means we might generate our electricity at a fuel cost of 1.4*5=7p/kWhr.
Now I have my ideas about doing it better next time but I would welcome yours, especially with regard to cutting the O+M cost of the motor.
For that comparison to convince you would need to show that the CHP situation was comparable to that, and no-one has.
There's the prime error. With CHP the heat is 100% (or 90%) useful in winter, and at least some percentage of it is useful in summer for heating DHW. Plus occasionally the summer heat could all prove useful, such as when the owner has a pool etc.
A couple of terms are unfamiliar: O+M - something & maintenance I guess
8/5/250
I doubt that, it'd be a remarkably hungry house that eats 100A. A lot run on 40A mains with never an incident, meaning they never exceed about 9.6kW.
In practical CHP installs I wouldnt expect to see such a high peak/base ratio.
Such kit is not favoured for CHP.
Dont forget the heat output value! The real value of what you get out per 1.4p kWh in is 20% x 6p in electricity, and 80% x 90% x 1.4p in heat. Thats 1.2p leccy and 1p of heat, total 2.2p. Compare that to a
90% efficient boiler that will return just 1.26p of heat, which is your only other option. The CHP gives you nearly double the value out.
The short version is that swinmming pool facilities have been installing CHP and saving considerable money. It works.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.