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Circlip23/01/2019 12:23:06
1723 forum posts

My neighbour had the answer to this forty years ago. "I want a white meter fitted as they supply cheap electricity".

He also questioned, "If I have a cheap tariff gas supply, How do I know that you're not getting any of my cheap gas through your pipes ? "

Regards Ian.

Samsaranda23/01/2019 15:10:04
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1688 forum posts
16 photos

A further extension of our solar project will be a battery incorporated when the price of batteries comes down to a sensible price, that will allow us to store any unused solar units and there is also the facility to top up the battery using off peak energy overnite, then any usage during the day outside of the amount of solar generated would effectively only have been charged at the off peak rate. To take the concept even further as we live in a windy coastal area, a windmill generator located in the side garden could easily give 1 kw every time the wind blows and that could be stored in the battery also. The only problem is that as yet I haven’t run it past the wife, not sure how she would take to the windmill in her garden.

Dave W

Speedy Builder523/01/2019 15:55:30
2878 forum posts
248 photos

Just wait until governments tax sunlight.

Samsaranda23/01/2019 16:09:49
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1688 forum posts
16 photos

Speedy, I am sure that is on the cards, there must be other candidates for tax as well, perhaps the air we breathe!

Dave W

Neil Wyatt23/01/2019 16:42:18
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19226 forum posts
749 photos
86 articles
Posted by Circlip on 23/01/2019 12:23:06:
He also questioned, "If I have a cheap tariff gas supply, How do I know that you're not getting any of my cheap gas through your pipes ? "

Tell him you don't want his cheap gas clogging up your burners and poisoning your family in the dead of night

Neil

Robert Atkinson 223/01/2019 17:00:54
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1891 forum posts
37 photos

Demand may be falling at the moment but that is set to change with electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids. Wind and solar aare no good for baseload and practical storgae is nowhere in sight. Offshore wind is not cheap.

Robert G8RPI.

Brian H23/01/2019 17:07:44
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2312 forum posts
112 photos

Shame that much of this has nothing to do with Big Tools!

Brian

Phil Whitley23/01/2019 19:04:31
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1533 forum posts
147 photos
Posted by Mark Rand on 22/01/2019 23:04:51:

Just a few little points:-

  1. It's Hinkley Point C, not Hinkley.
  2. An average consumption of 1kW per household is not unreasonable for many parts of the world. Arguing about peak consumption for a base load plant is pissing in the wind.
  3. The reactors chosen for Hinkley Point C were a completely unproven design when the order was placed and unlikely to be an economic choice. A repeat of Sizewell B (for which the regulatory case had been made) using a number of the ex-Westinghouse SNUPPS reactors, possibly coupled with GEC/Alstom/GE Arabelle half speed turbines, would have been far cheaper even though Wendyhouse no-longer exist.
  4. Wind flutters about all over the place in an island the size of the UK. Sunlight is somewhat predictable, but still rather varied. Nuclear is base load and very good for it. CCGT, nowadays is baseload plus peak lopping. Those used to be the province of oil, but CCGTs are lower capital cost, more responsive and more efficient (albeit shorter operating life).
  5. I have two GEC Meters (St Leonards works, Stafford) meters in my house. One belongs to the electric company and the other belongs to me. My one monitors the shed's electric usage. Data from these is fed into a spreadsheet when I remember to take the readings. They show that my shed (with continuous A/C-heat pump) consumes an average of 400W and the rest of the house (including SWMBO's pottery kiln) uses 950W.
  6. One reason that France has had the cheapest electricity in Western Europe for the past 40 years is that they invested in large numbers of essentially identical nuclear reactors. They have been exporting 2GW of cheap power to us for the last three decades...

1) Agreed, but a bit pedantic, dont you think? Whatever it is called, an alternative would be "money pit"

2) Not the civilised world, average daily UK consumption is 12kWhr (not my figures) in the USA it is double that.

3) Agreed, never let a government do an engineers job!

4)The UK actually has the best wind patterns for wind generation in Europe. Wind does not "flutter about", especially offshore, it is a product of temperature differential weather systems, and can be predicted with good regularity. It cannot meet the base load yet, but if you look at the offshore capacity under construction and proposed offshore wind farms, it won't be long. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_offshore_wind_farms . As I said, nuclear is base load because it can sell every watt it produces, it says so in its contract!, but it can only produce 24% of peak load, CCGT regularly contributes over 50% of peak load. Wind is now cheaper than nuclear https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-41220948 My drive of 6 miles to my workshop 5 days a week (when I can get away with it) passes more than 30 wind turbines, but they are only stationary 1 to 2 days per month, and evn then, never for the whole day.

5) if you add your averages up and multiply by the twelve waking hours, you get 16.2kWhrs, so slightly more than average use. However, assuming your wifes pottery kiln is at least 2kw, and operates on a simmerstat, or the electronic equivalent it will dissipate the full rated wattage until it reaches the set temperature, and then fall back with occasional bursts to maintain the set temperature. The point is not what the average is, it is the fact that generation has to be able to come on line to match the peak loads, and although these peaks are pretty much well known throughout the days, week and seasons, generation must be matched to demand, whatever they demand may be.

6) By " they invested" you mean, "the French government paid for" One of the reasons the French have cheap power is that the French Government backed EDF is using the vast profits it is making in the UK to subsidise the cost per unit in France! At 40 years old I would think that the early ones are coming to the end of their design life, or will be soon. They have not been exporting 2gW of power to us for three decades, this is simply wrong, look at http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/ all the europe interconnects work in both directions, and the direction of power flow changes daily, sometimes hourly.

7) Agreed.

8) agreed

I don't wish to get into arguments, or put anyones nose out of joint, just to correct some of the many misconceptions around renewables and wind epsecially. In the area of East Yorkshire where my workshop is, there are many long supply lines, still many overhead, and it is amazing how the addition of wind turbines direct to grid has reinforced supply, and stopped the lights dipping whenever Farmer Giles grain dryer kicks in! The first pair of turbines I pass provide 154KW direct to a very large potato farm who specialise in seed potatoes, and have large loads consisting of freezers, and much lighting for sprouting of seed potatoes. It has revolutionised their business, they have gone from huge electricity bills to being a net exporter most of their "off peak" season It works!

Edited By Phil Whitley on 23/01/2019 19:07:47

Phil Whitley23/01/2019 19:16:21
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1533 forum posts
147 photos
Posted by Robert Atkinson 2 on 23/01/2019 17:00:54:

Demand may be falling at the moment but that is set to change with electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids. Wind and solar aare no good for baseload and practical storgae is nowhere in sight. Offshore wind is not cheap.

Robert G8RPI.

Offshore wind is cheaper than Hinkley point C. See https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-41220948 There are two companies willing to build offshore at £57.50 per MWhr, Hinkley point C is subsidised at £92.50 per MWhr!

Neil Wyatt23/01/2019 19:27:25
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19226 forum posts
749 photos
86 articles
Posted by Brian H on 23/01/2019 17:07:44:

Shame that much of this has nothing to do with Big Tools!

Brian

In all honesty most of the vid in the orignal posting had little to do with machine tools.

Neil

vintage engineer23/01/2019 19:45:23
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293 forum posts
1 photos

Well I don't what those big machines are if they are not machine tools!angry

Posted by Neil Wyatt on 23/01/2019 19:27:25:
Posted by Brian H on 23/01/2019 17:07:44:

Shame that much of this has nothing to do with Big Tools!

Brian

In all honesty most of the vid in the orignal posting had little to do with machine tools.

Neil

Phil Whitley23/01/2019 19:53:18
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1533 forum posts
147 photos

I'm sorry Neil, I have jumped in again and caused an off topic ruckus! I will comment no more on this thorny subject!!

Phil

SillyOldDuffer23/01/2019 22:05:25
10668 forum posts
2415 photos
Posted by Phil Whitley on 23/01/2019 19:04:31:

Posted by Mark Rand on 22/01/2019 23:04:51:

...

  1. One reason that France has had the cheapest electricity in Western Europe for the past 40 years is that they invested in large numbers of essentially identical nuclear reactors. They have been exporting 2GW of cheap power to us for the last three decades...
...

6) By " they invested" you mean, "the French government paid for" One of the reasons the French have cheap power is that the French Government backed EDF is using the vast profits it is making in the UK to subsidise the cost per unit in France! At 40 years old I would think that the early ones are coming to the end of their design life, or will be soon. They have not been exporting 2gW of power to us for three decades, this is simply wrong, look at http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/ all the europe interconnects work in both directions, and the direction of power flow changes daily, sometimes hourly.

...

I too don't want to put anyone's nose out either but I think you're both wrong - maybe! A trap engineers often fall into is to undervalue the financial importance of an operation. We tend to concentrate on the efficient operation of technology and ignore or demean the uncomfortable fact that it has to be paid for. Recent threads bewail the cancellation of projects like Black Arrow, TSR2 etc and blamed these 'mistakes' on evil accountants! I'd say they were engineering failures due to cost overruns.

In France EDF inherited a state-subsidised Nuclear Power programme that claimed to be producing cheap electricity. The accounts are murky but It probably isn't true: the experience of everyone else is that - despite obvious advantages - Nuclear is expensive.

In most of the developed world energy is managed by selling it wholesale at prices agreed before consumption. In the UK several providers compete one day in advance to sell electricity made in various different ways - coal, nuclear, gas, wind, solar etc. Famously coal electricity was recently the most expensive and for the first time ever in Britain, no coal powered electricity was generated at all.

Renewables might seem to be at a disadvantage. Actually they bid on the basis of the next days weather forecast which, although locally unreliable, does predict the overall capacity available nationally with reasonable accuracy.

French nuclear energy is bought and sold in the same market and it follows that the UK only buy when it's cheaper than the alternatives. The French aren't much profiting from the arrangement, rather it's a way of reducing the cost of running their nuclear power stations by keeping them working flat out. In practice, the French taxpayer is probably subsidising British consumers.

My main point is that it is money rather than straightforward engineering considerations that matter most in this system. An engineer can explain how best to run a generator at optimum efficiency, but his wise advice is utterly pointless unless the electricity has a customer. True that engineering considerations cannot be ignored completely because in practice a supplier may not be able to meet the contract. The market has a number of financial mechanisms for dealing with this, for example Spark, Dark, Quark and Bark Spread can be used to calculate the cost of bringing power stations on or off stream in the event this has to be done unexpectedly. The role of the engineers in this game is to find cheaper and more flexible ways of meeting demand, not to tell customers what they can have. Until the technology goes wrong that is!

Engineers and accountants have always had a difficult relationship. Accountants don't understand technology, but they know exactly what it is worth at the moment, which might be nothing. They bankrupt companies by refusing risk and missing future opportunities. Engineers who don't understand the need to balance the books bankrupt the company by costing more than customers are prepared to pay. Then they blame the customer for not appreciating the 'quality' of their over-priced products.

Best results are achieved by team work but it's not easy - specialists rarely understand each other.

Dave

 

 

Edited By SillyOldDuffer on 23/01/2019 22:08:36

Kettrinboy24/01/2019 11:18:52
94 forum posts
49 photos

Heres the "big tool " I used to work , this is circa 1985 I was 22 yrs old and a couple of years out of my 4 yr apprenticeship and happily working in the turning section of a printing press maker in Kettering , then I was asked to train up on this beast because the bloke who worked on it was leaving , its a milling machine converted from a big planer , made by Futurmill a firm based in Brighouse Yorks , table size 12 ft by 5 ft and a 50hp motor , with the 8 inch facemill which you can see fitted a roughing cut on cast iron which is about the only material this machine ever did was full width of the facemill 1/4 inch depth at 30ft p/min feed , its max was 50 ft p/min , this machine did all the preliminary milling of the baseplates and sideplates for the presses , typical size of a baseplate was up to 6ft square and after the top and side surfaces had been milled (you can just see the side head behind me ), then a load of drilled and tapped holes ranging from M5 to M30 had to be done , when I first did an M5 hole I thought how can this massive thing do a tiny thread like this, but by using a sprung holder and getting used to using the fine controls on the pendant it became everyday stuff , sideplates were typically 4-6 ft long and 3-4 ft wide by 2-3 inches thick and the tolerance on all thicknesses was +/- 0.002" which it would pretty easily get to ,I worked on this machine for 6 yrs and I am glad I used facemasks from early on with it as the black CI dust produced was horrendous , every day you needed a new mask as a new mask put on in the morning would be black on the outside by knock off time, I don't know if its still working today as I left the firm in 1990 and havnt been back since so I p1010448.jpgmight have to have have a peek in the shop sometime as its only down the hill from my house.

regards Geoff

vintage engineer24/01/2019 11:40:14
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293 forum posts
1 photos

I know what you mean about CI dust! I used turn 72" dia mill rollers that where 100 yrs old!

Posted by Kettrinboy on 24/01/2019 11:18:52:

Heres the "big tool " I used to work , this is circa 1985 I was 22 yrs old and a couple of years out of my 4 yr apprenticeship and happily working in the turning section of a printing press maker in Kettering , then I was asked to train up on this beast because the bloke who worked on it was leaving , its a milling machine converted from a big planer , made by Futurmill a firm based in Brighouse Yorks , table size 12 ft by 5 ft and a 50hp motor , with the 8 inch facemill which you can see fitted a roughing cut on cast iron which is about the only material this machine ever did was full width of the facemill 1/4 inch depth at 30ft p/min feed , its max was 50 ft p/min , this machine did all the preliminary milling of the baseplates and sideplates for the presses , typical size of a baseplate was up to 6ft square and after the top and side surfaces had been milled (you can just see the side head behind me ), then a load of drilled and tapped holes ranging from M5 to M30 had to be done , when I first did an M5 hole I thought how can this massive thing do a tiny thread like this, but by using a sprung holder and getting used to using the fine controls on the pendant it became everyday stuff , sideplates were typically 4-6 ft long and 3-4 ft wide by 2-3 inches thick and the tolerance on all thicknesses was +/- 0.002" which it would pretty easily get to ,I worked on this machine for 6 yrs and I am glad I used facemasks from early on with it as the black CI dust produced was horrendous , every day you needed a new mask as a new mask put on in the morning would be black on the outside by knock off time, I don't know if its still working today as I left the firm in 1990 and havnt been back since so I p1010448.jpgmight have to have have a peek in the shop sometime as its only down the hill from my house.

regards Geoff

Mike Poole24/01/2019 15:03:17
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3676 forum posts
82 photos

This little machine was being installed around 1974 while I was an apprentice. When I finished my time I was a sparky in this tool room for three years and this was one of my patients when it broke down. Each axis had a 40hp ac motor for rapid traverse and a DC speed controlled motor for feeds. The main spindle motor was a 100hp DC speed controlled. It’s capacity was 10ftx12ftx16ft

Mike

890b7083-baa4-4c63-afa3-bdaf51c64082.jpeg

Edited By Mike Poole on 24/01/2019 15:17:55

Phil Whitley24/01/2019 18:52:27
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1533 forum posts
147 photos

SOD Dave, we don't have a like button on this forum, so LIKE!!yes

mgnbuk24/01/2019 19:28:46
1394 forum posts
103 photos

made by Futurmill a firm based in Brighouse Yorks

Now long gone. I'm pretty sure that the old mill that used to bear their name on Wakefield Road is now the site of the Lidl I do my weekly shop at. Kendal & Gent still appear to be in business, though no longer building large machines.

Mike's Ingersoll is about the size of the Craven (with Futuremill head) at Broadbents in Mytholmroyd - my first "proper" job after finishing my apprenticeship. A bit of a change after my last year at Boxfords ! The Craven was also in a pit (to give clearance for the overhead gantry crane), which had a sump with a permenantly running drain pump in one corner as the pit base was below the water table - the canal towpath ran behind the electrican's shop (next to the pit) at about head height & the river Calder was just across the road. The Broadbent works is also long gone (as is the old Boy Lane, Wheatley, Boxford works) - now the site of several appartment blocks.

Nigel B

Howard Lewis24/01/2019 19:50:06
7227 forum posts
21 photos

In the 60s, just up the road from the Sentinel Works (Then the base of Rolls Royce Oil Engine Division), in Shrewsbury; on the Harlescott estate there was a firm making huge boring mills.

We're talking thirty inch diameter cutters!

The machines were assembled in a pit large enough to take a detached house, with the top of the column sticking out another twenty or so feet, above ground.

The amazing thing was that the slideways were covered with Formica, because when oiled, the coefficient of friction was on a par with wet ice!

Don't know what the machines were used for. (Milling gas holders from the solid??????)

Howard

Chris Gunn24/01/2019 20:29:28
459 forum posts
28 photos

Kettrinboy, that takes me back, I did my apprentiship at Timsons as well, but I was long gone by 1985.

Chris Gunn, another Kettrinboy

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