@X31Andy@mastodon.green
@X31Andy@mastodon.green avatar

X31Andy

@X31Andy@mastodon.green

#OffGrid in South Shropshire. Strong interests in #Linux #Solar power #Renewables and #power systems

Brexit was and still is a catastrophe

Proud member of the 'Guardian-reading, tofu-eating wokerati'

Feel free to contact me on email andy@x31.com unless you are trying to sell me "investments".

I use British English language so don't be offended if the words I use have different meanings or usage in your dialect.

#fedi22 #energymastodon

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

puppygirlhornypost, to random
@puppygirlhornypost@transfem.social avatar

I was sent this in a group chat. Feast your eyes on this cursed cable management

X31Andy,
@X31Andy@mastodon.green avatar

@puppygirlhornypost I'd love to know where those racks were. The oldest version of the picture I can find is in a Cisco presentation in 2006 promoting their switches.

X31Andy, to random
@X31Andy@mastodon.green avatar

At the Everything Electric show in Harrogate. Not as big as the London event but everyone is really friendly and it isn't raining either.

X31Andy, to random
@X31Andy@mastodon.green avatar

Anyone for a game of ootba?

#signs #Ilkley

CountBinface, to random
@CountBinface@mastodon.world avatar

It’s meant to be.

X31Andy,
@X31Andy@mastodon.green avatar

@CountBinface I guess July 4 is in the second half of the year but not by much!

It is like Sunak said he had had enough and wanted the earliest possible date in the second half of the year

X31Andy, to random
@X31Andy@mastodon.green avatar

"Based on all the information that wasn't passed to you do you think you are the unluckiest CEO in history?"

—— Jason Beer to Paula Vennels

X31Andy, to hongkong
@X31Andy@mastodon.green avatar

Matthew Trickett, charged with spying in the UK has died from unknown causes in a park in Maidenhead.

Certainly inconvenient timing.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/may/21/ex-royal-marine-charged-with-spying-for-china-found-dead-in-park

X31Andy, to FIRE
@X31Andy@mastodon.green avatar

I've just watched the Plainly Difficult video on the 1985 Bradford City Valley Parade fire.

I'd been at that ground about a week prior for something unrelated to football. I wasn't at the match on the day but could see the fire from the distance. The memory still upsets me almost 40 years later.

The ironic thing was that the match was the last of the season and the stadium was due to be demolished the next week

Well worth a watch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Odjfn1zIxpI

X31Andy, to random
@X31Andy@mastodon.green avatar

Before Newton discovered gravity people had to hold on tightly,

peterbrown, to random
@peterbrown@mastodon.scot avatar

“Remarkably, food production doubled under the agrivoltaic system. And because water evaporation from the plants cooled the panels, the solar system itself generated 3% more electricity during the summer, showing how both food and solar production can perform better when done in collaboration”.

https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2021/12/solar-and-crop-production-research-shows-multi-solving-climate-benefits/

X31Andy,
@X31Andy@mastodon.green avatar

@peterbrown but the government is all too happy to grow "energy" crops which also displace food.

arstechnica, to random
@arstechnica@mastodon.social avatar

The surprise is not that Boeing lost commercial crew but that it finished at all

"The structural inefficiency was a huge deal."

https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/05/the-surprise-is-not-that-boeing-lost-commercial-crew-but-that-it-finished-at-all/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

X31Andy,
@X31Andy@mastodon.green avatar

@arstechnica This story mirrors the issues Boeing have had in the airliner industry. Mentour Now has just done a really good video on the structural airliner division issues.

The short summary is you don't run a business which has 15 year project development cycles solely on the basis of quarterly profits announcements and get rid of divisions which make key parts of your core product.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCbHpJShoXk

X31Andy, to random
@X31Andy@mastodon.green avatar

If you are in an area where there are local elections tomorrow then please go and vote!

If you can't bring yourself to actually select one of the candidates then spoil your ballot paper rather than not go. At least that way your (lack of a) vote will be counted.

Don't forget to take your Id.

X31Andy, to conservative
@X31Andy@mastodon.green avatar

Just received a load of election material through my postbox from all the local election candidates.

The one from the candidate only mentioned the word "Conservative" at the bottom of the last page and had a great big green banner on the front page which confused me for a while.

It appears they are embarrassed to even mention their own party name!

X31Andy,
@X31Andy@mastodon.green avatar

One of the leaflets was from "The English Democrats" for the local police commissioner. Reading it makes Nigel Farage look left wing! Guess they are hoping to pick up former Tory voters who would rather die than vote labour or libdem.

I expect they will lose their deposit.

X31Andy, to random
@X31Andy@mastodon.green avatar

The fun of self build. I've spent most of the day working out how to design a sewage treatment plant and drainage field where the water table almost reaches the surface in winter.

I'm now looking at a holding tank and pump to squirt the outgoing liquid from the treatment plant into a "drainage mound". As the saying goes ... its a load of sh1t.

My next task this weekend is to do a "percolation test" so I know how big to make everything.

X31Andy,
@X31Andy@mastodon.green avatar

One of the issues is it looks like I have to anchor the tanks in the ground to stop them floating out of the ground when the groundwater levels are high. Basically I have to bolt them down to a concrete slab.

Otherwise cue the song:

"the good sh1t sails on the alley alley o" :)

X31Andy, to Israel
@X31Andy@mastodon.green avatar

Yes Prime Minister On the Arabs and Israel

This clip was uploaded 15 years ago and is absolutely relevant today. The original series was broadcast in the 1980s and shows how little things have changed since then.

The writers of the series were extremely talented :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgLg9zQH3vU

X31Andy, to Electricvehicles
@X31Andy@mastodon.green avatar

Bad news: The 22KW car chargers around here often fail when I plug in my Zoe.

Good news: about 50% of the time they fail into "free vend".

I've just got 30KWh for free :)

#electricvehicles #chargingstation

X31Andy, to random
@X31Andy@mastodon.green avatar

The problem is that postage stamps are as good as money but without the security features that banknotes use to enable recipients to determine their authenticity.

Postage stamps are printed with the cheapest possible process having a unique barcode which nobody can use to determine if the stamp has been previously used or is fake.

The post office should use watermarks and print serial numbers in a readable form to make it easier to detect fakes.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/apr/11/royal-mail-chinese-made-fake-stamps

X31Andy, to music
@X31Andy@mastodon.green avatar

Funny how a good bit of music can completely change your mood. I was feeling a bit under the weather this morning then had Navras come up on my YouTube recommendations. I'm now eager to face the world :)

Forgot how good it was, definitely benefits from having the volume turned up.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navras

EarthOrgUK, to random
@EarthOrgUK@mastodon.energy avatar

Domestic Heat Pumps: Barriers to Installation (2022) - A case study in the friction in specifying and installing a heat-pump in the UK, even for a savvy early adopter. - https://www.earth.org.uk/heat-pump-barriers.html

X31Andy,
@X31Andy@mastodon.green avatar

@jpnp @bazcurtis @EarthOrgUK maybe the £2K would be better spent teaching the planning people how to do basic mathematics and log scales!

It must be very frustrating

fkamiah17, to UKpolitics
@fkamiah17@toot.wales avatar

So let me get this right. The public pays more, they get to keep their dividends and want a break from the rules and the fines for a bit?

FT: "‘Thames Water has asked Ofwat to approve a 56 % real-terms increase in bills by 2030 as well as leniency on dividend rules and fines for pollution and other service failures’"

https://archive.is/lV1xM

X31Andy,
@X31Andy@mastodon.green avatar

@fkamiah17 OFWAT should keep on pressing Thames to comply with all their obligations and when the company fails and heads to insolvency arrange for the nationalisation free of debt and shareholders.

The money they save from not paying debts can then be used for investment in the network.

A lot of the debt was built up by the first shareholders who borrowed against the assets to pay dividends then eventually offloaded the operation to other shareholders.

xahteiwi, (edited ) to random
@xahteiwi@mastodon.social avatar

What's the typical tolerance for solar panel power ratings? If a module is rated 465Wp, would you expect it to exceed that value significantly if you check your inverter's measured peak power output and divide by the number of modules? 🤔

(Edit: @pvaneynd and @X31Andy provided valuable pointers, see thread.)

X31Andy,
@X31Andy@mastodon.green avatar

@xahteiwi Normally the tolerance is specified on the panel data sheet and is something like +/- 5W on a 400W panel. This is measured under standard conditions with sunlight directly facing the panel with an incident energy of 1000W per square metre at a panel temperature of 25C.

In practice you will see this very rarely, if at all - normally the output of the panel will be significantly lower.

X31Andy,
@X31Andy@mastodon.green avatar

@xahteiwi @pvaneynd Yes, power output goes up by about 0.3% for every degree the panel is below 25C so a combination of peak sunlight at the normal to the panel and low temperatures would give higher power until the panel warms up.

X31Andy, to random
@X31Andy@mastodon.green avatar

My talk proposal "How to go solar off grid in the UK" has been accepted for

quixoticgeek, to random
@quixoticgeek@v.st avatar

Last may @X31Andy came over to visit. Being a renewable energy geek, when I asked what he wanted to do for the day, he asked to go see some wind Turbines. By pure chance it was national wind mill open day, which gave us a crash course in 400 years of wind energy. Starting with a post mill, then a smock mill, before entering Flevopolder and visiting 3 generations of wind Turbine.

What amazed me most of tho was that the quietest of the turbines were the newest. 1/n

X31Andy,
@X31Andy@mastodon.green avatar

@quixoticgeek the blades with the feathered edges made a hissing sound rather than the normal thudding sound as they passed me.

Really surprising and impressive

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