andrewducker | Interesting Links for 26-07-2017

Serial sex offender may never be released from jail: (tags: rape prison uk )
A limiting factor on producing electricity in a warming world? Water.: (tags: water power electricity thefuture )
A fascinating discussion between Guy Verhofstadt and various members of the House Of Lords: Particularly of interest: The Good Friday Agreement and The Salisbury Convention
(tags: houseoflords politics europe uk )
Netflix to air Futurama creator Matt Groening's new show: (tags: fantasy tv netflix )
What It’s Like to Be a Woman at a Tech Conference: (tags: women Technology )
Doctor Who: advice for someone who hasn't seen it yet: (tags: doctorwho advice )
'Justice League' reshoots, Superman mustache removal to cost $25M (no, really): (tags: hair movies )
Adobe ending Flash support at the end of 2020: (tags: Technology web )
WoodSwimmer: A New Stop-Motion Short Made Entirely by Tediously Cutting Through Wood: (tags: animation time materials viaElfy )
"Dear Jeremy Corbyn, let me tell you a story about immigration": (tags: immigration labour politics history )
The Admiral admiral is now an admiral: (tags: navy insurance advertising viaSwampers )
New diesel and petrol vehicles to be banned from 2040 in UK: (tags: UK transport cars electricity )
Lawsuit: Sexual harassment ‘victim’ was San Francisco business rival in disguise: I am furious because this makes it harder for victims to be taken seriously.
(tags: OhForFucksSake fraud harassment )
US Girl Scouts add STEM badges: (tags: girls science GoodNews )
Spectacular scene of a thunderstorm in eastern China: (tags: video weather awesome )
IPv6 usage breaks 20% worldwide: (tags: internet ipv6 )
In pictures: Demolition of Edinburgh's most unloved landmark: (tags: scotland edinburgh architecture design )

There are definately some real infrastructure challenges to come with the expanded use of electric vehicles.

240v overnight charging for people with their own drive or private parking space is pretty straightforward.

It gets harder if you are trying to do on-street charging, charging at higher voltages for shorter periods or charging during the day.

I think I share the articles view that by 2040 there will be very few internal combustion engine passenger cars. If you assume that electric vehicles are cost competitive without subsidy by 2020 and a twenty year life span for passenger vehicles that leaves you with a relatively small rump of ICE passenger vehicles in the early 2040's. So I think this is a classic act of government regulation of the school of "We've decided that by X date in the future you won't want Y, so we're going to ban Y starting from date X+n."

I don't think electric vehicles on their own have a huge impact on city scapes. You lose petrol stations and gain electricity grid reenforcement and probably on-street charging posts all over the place. Streets become quieter and cleaner which will make being outside nicer. (Edinburgh will be a awash with pavement cafes.)

It's autonomous vehicles and in particular transport as a service which I think has a profound effect on how we build and use cities.

There have been proposals to equip all new lampposts with electrical outlets for electric cars. Of course, such infrastructure takes decades to replace through natural attrition; they'd just be getting switched over to whatever the next generation of transportation turns out to be.

Thanks for the info.

Looks like there are some trials in London. It looks like a neater solution than adding extra bits of kit to the street.

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/london-street-lamps-electric-car-charging-points-ubitricity-tech-firm-hounslow-council-richmond-a7809126.html

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/cars/article-4607870/A-1-000-conversion-turn-lampposts-EV-chargers.html

There are something like 31 million cars on the road in the UK. If you assume you need one charging point for every five cars at £1,000 a conversion the direct costs are about £6 billion pounds. That's before you have to pay for beefing up the local distribution network. Sub-stations are in the region of a £100k.

If they can be fitted in 30 minutes then the installation team could do, say, 12 a day. 6 million units needed. 500,000 installation days. So a thousand teams could do that in two years, a hundred teams could do that in twenty years.

I don't think there is any getting away from the fact that converting our cities for wide-spread electric vehicle use is going to be expensive and take some time. I think it's the right thing to do but it's not free of challenges or bottle-necks.

It's big issue for power plants is water.

Not just the availability of water for steam raising or the temperature of water for cooling (colder being better) but the temperature of the water you can dump back in to rivers or seas without boiling the fish.

Many of our river basins are already pretty close to capacity with regard to how much more heat dumping they can take.

If you get the chance, do read the House of Lords article.

The real politics that come into it, though, are exactly as Charles said: intimidation tends to work best.

Ouch

Yup!

Greenhouse gas emissions rise with warmer water too.

The theoretical maximum (Carnot) efficiency of a steam turbine is based on the temperature differential between the superheated steam (limited to about 540 C before the turbine blades start to deform under load) and the condensed steam (about 25 C). The condenser has to be warmer than the cooling water to get an adequate heat transfer rate. So if your intake water rises from 5 to 25 C, you'll have to raise your condenser temperature to perhaps 45 C, dropping efficiency and increasing fossil fuel consumption by 4% or more.

(note: in Canada, water from the bottom of large lakes is a constant 4 C. Smaller lakes "turn over" in the summer, when sufficient heat in the upper levels pushes the thermocline down to the bottom of the lake. Suddenly the whole lake is warm, and rotting bottom vegetation makes the whole area stink. Cottages with deep intake pipes suddenly have warm smelly water instead of cold clear water coming from the taps).

That's a good point on the knock on effect on greenhouse gases.

I remember when I worked in the energy sector being struck by how much the output from our CCGT's varied as clouds went over the cooling tower and then looking at how the performance of our plants in England compared with pretty much indentical plants in the south-west of the USA and in Spain.

Oh yes, they do all sound quite sensible :( I wish Brexit was being run by someone sensible :(

I'm only more worried about NI. At first I wasn't, I didn't think anyone would be willing to screw it up. But now, Brexit seems more inevitable, and no-one seems to have any suggestion for the GFA :(

I don't think there _are_ any good suggestions for GFA.

Well, no :( :( :( But people could at least talk about a least-bad. Or, preferably, abandon brexit entirely.

Interesting Links for 26-07-2017

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A fascinating discussion between Guy Verhofstadt and various members of the House Of Lords

Re: A fascinating discussion between Guy Verhofstadt and various members of the House Of Lords

Re: A fascinating discussion between Guy Verhofstadt and various members of the House Of Lords