Interesting Links for 20-05-2026
May. 20th, 2026 12:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
andrewducker- 1. Did Zohran Mamdani's New Budget Really Eliminate New York City's Deficit?
- (tags:budget tax newyork facts )
- 2. Standard Thermal - dirt cheap thermal energy from renewables
- (tags:renewables heating energy )
- 3. Impressive Gassian splat of a bumblebee. Amazing level of detail.
- (tags:photography bee )
- 4. What do Labour members think of Streeting, Burnham, and other leadership contenders?
- (tags:labour politics uk polls )
- 5. A good video guide to Ozempic, how it works, and what the long term looks like
- (tags:obesity medicine video )
- 6. More than 60 Labour MPs call for review of UK voting system
- (tags:voting reform labour UK politics )
- 7. Autistic children are the best
- (tags:children autism funny )
Re: 2.
Date: 2026-05-20 12:38 pm (UTC)You wouldn't have to heat very much. It's not like you'd be heating thousands of square miles of it.
Re: 2.
Date: 2026-05-20 01:13 pm (UTC)That is probably a bit more than we need, but I imagine it requires an area similar to the floor area (of all floors) in a building.
Also, if you have to heat it beyond 600°C and back to air temperature every year, is that going to cause subsidence - especially in a wet climate ?
Talking of water, will ground-water flows (including rain on its way to the nearest river) take away significant quantities of heat away as they go ?
Re: 2.
Date: 2026-05-20 01:37 pm (UTC)"2MWhr thermal per meter of pipe+resistor." And they space them 2m apart.
So a 5m x 5m plot would have 3 lengths of pipe, 15m long in total. 30MWhr of heat. That's massively more than I use in a year. By over 30x.
Re: 2.
Date: 2026-05-20 02:47 pm (UTC)So yes I have over-estimated how big a plot I would need, but I don't think my roof would take enough panels
to put that much heat into the ground*.
*I could use a reverse heat-pump to multiply the electrical energy into heat in the ground, but then I would
not get the ground anywhere near 600°C.
Re: 2.
Date: 2026-05-20 02:59 pm (UTC)Turns out my maths is terrible - and I used about 12MWhr of Gas in the last year. And 3MWhr of Electricity. So less gas than you, but not vastly dissimilar.
I don't think this heating approach is designed for individuals. I think we're talking about something you'd put in next to a power generator to use up excess electricity. Or somewhere industrial. Or otherwise large enough to make building it worthwhile.
I'm still hoping that District Heating takes off. This kind of thing would be perfect for that.
Re: 2.
Date: 2026-05-20 03:25 pm (UTC)by Brian Martucci
https://www.minnpost.com/newsletter/this-supersized-heat-pump-will-heat-and-cool-a-whole-st-paul-neighborhood/
Just 'normal' geothermal. Baking the ground seems like an idea whose time will not come, although not a mile away from salt or sand batteries.