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 )
no subject
Date: 2026-05-20 11:11 am (UTC)2.
Date: 2026-05-20 12:13 pm (UTC)Also, I'm not inclined to trust the tech savvy of anyone who thinks anyone rational might install PV in Scotland expecting to get ANYTHING useful over winter,I reckon "overcapacity" doesn't even begin to describe it. But please,(PLEASE) someone tell me otherwise, because I'm similar latitude and weather and I would LOVE to be wrong...
no subject
Date: 2026-05-20 12:15 pm (UTC)Re: 2.
Date: 2026-05-20 12:17 pm (UTC)7
Date: 2026-05-20 12:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-05-20 12:36 pm (UTC)Han Solo diagnosis?
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 12:41 pm (UTC)Checking around, apparently people get about 10% solar production in January of what they get in the summer.
So you'd need a lot of overproduction.
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: 7
Date: 2026-05-20 01:41 pm (UTC)Re: 2.
Date: 2026-05-20 02:20 pm (UTC)Over the year solar needs to generate as much energy as is currently used for heating.
Adjust for inefficiencies, electrical use, and any heat put in when a ground-source heat pump is used (in reverse) as air-con.
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.
no subject
Date: 2026-05-20 03:23 pm (UTC)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.
no subject
Date: 2026-05-20 05:56 pm (UTC)I saw This Video from Digital Corridor (film effects dudes) talking about it. It's wild.
Re: 2.
Date: 2026-05-20 09:04 pm (UTC)We have panels rated at about 6.5kWp and 11kWh of battery.
In December the panels generated 292.7kWh of electricity - about half of what we used (there were four of in the house that month). In October and March we generated more than we used.
In addition to selling excess electricity back to the grid, the battery means that we can buy cheap electricity at night and sell it back at a profit at "teatime".
In money terms the battery is more significant than the panels. You might get the same effect with an electric car.
Re: 2.
Date: 2026-05-21 04:41 am (UTC)Thanks for the specs too, I tend to think in number of panels, because that's how the UI of the software I used to develop at the solar company presented it to the user, but the exact ratings are more useful.
You have given me hope. Though I don't know how much I'd need to run a heat pump... The website calculators of the installation companies all know though :-). I would have so much roof area on the outbuildings ... if it were not for the the fact they have asbestos roofs ...
Thanks very much again. Food for thought.
Re: 7
Date: 2026-05-21 04:43 am (UTC)To be clear, I'm sure we DO love each other, we're just not ones for the words.