Leaving Carbon Footprints In The Snow

[Wonderwall]

27 minutes ago, Mouldy said:

Hmmm.  Getting dangerously close to being political, but there could have been an opportunity to invest in what remains of the rail network to make improvements, electrify some lines, invest in new rolling stock and make the fares affordable.  Instead, we are building a vanity line, that will serve a minority of the population, which may not ever be finished and is swallowing billions of pounds.

I wasn’t attempting to be political in the slightest. Apologies if that’s how it came over.

If we are not allow to comment on how our country has apparently regressed then I suppose I best not post other than talking about boats.

I wasn’t criticising the current regime , it’s been a UK problem for many a generation. It was simply an observation . 

[floydraser]

Pete Waterman, the well known train enthusiast explained the Beeching cuts very well. A big contributer to the economics of it was the increase in the number of people owning their own cars and therefore reducing the number of passengers on the rails.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[HEM]

My son has a Volkswagen ID.3 as a company car & is VERY happy with it & says its great fun to drive.

During the Summer months it will charge from the solar panels on his roof (recently built house).

[CambridgeCabby]

Irrespective of which party is / has been in power over the last few decades none has as addressed the transport problem which has steadily worsened , the cost of train travel in this country makes it almost impossible for a family to travel that way compared to using their car .

Rural buses in our area have all but disappeared so again the only recourse is to use private transport .

The investment that would be needed to drag our public transport systems into the 21st century would be astronomical and no political party would propose or undertake such a project as the tax levy that would be needed would certainly cost any party their premiership. 

[CambridgeCabby]

1 hour ago, MargeandParge said:

Why Don't EV,s have their bodies made of solar charging materials connected to their battery bank's. 

Just a thought Marge and Parge 

Simple , solar energy wouldn’t be taxable 

[Smoggy]

2 hours ago, MargeandParge said:

Why Don't EV,s have their bodies made of solar charging materials connected to their battery bank's. 

Just a thought Marge and Parge 

I believe there is one that has but it's a prototype that's ludicrously expensive but it was explained that anyone living in southern spain would probably never have to charge it, us in UK wouldn't be so lucky.

I don't remeber the program but Hannah Fry was the presenter and it was bbc (probably 4). (secrets of...?)

[Regulo]

6 hours ago, annv said:

Beaching never closed one foot of track, he told the government what lines/routes were economical and what was not,  he even said that certain lines should be kept open in spit of them being uneconomical for social reasons.  labour were the ones that closed the lines although Barbara Castle did keep some open for social reasons. John

Wasn't the minister for transport at the time Ernest Marples? Of Marples Ridgeway, the road builders of motorways? Some incentive there to close railways, if you have a cynical mind! 

[grendel]

take as an example the ULEZ zone proposed, now try and find a tube train station outside the zone, so you can park outside and take public transport in? I can see two on the eastern border- but by rights they are british rail stations- Brentwood and shenley, I have found the unreliability of trying to reach stations further in from central london, several times i have been caught in delays, times when 5 trains in a row all stop short of the destination, during peak hours, leaving 5 train loads of passengers fighting to get on the tube train when one is going through.

[SteveO]

20 hours ago, Wonderwall said:

Whoever closed them , it was a major error, that was my point.

And the subsequent selling off of the track bed and infrastructure compounded the error massively.  Chances are that we'll need them again some time very soon.

[oldgregg]

On 11/03/2023 at 16:39, MargeandParge said:

Why Don't EV,s have their bodies made of solar charging materials connected to their battery bank's. 

Just a thought Marge and Parge 

Can you imagine what insurance group a car covered with solar panels would be? It would get written off if you looked at it funny .

But the main reason is that if you did (and the Lightyear Zero is the car being referred to) then it would add probably 5-10 miles a day in the British summer sun.... Great for a car being used locally I guess if you don't mind the pricetag. I have seen the Lightyear in person and it's massive and not very practical.

Better to have a useful load of solar (not just the token amount that 'eco' houses have) with battery storage on every new home, office and factory and use that power. Why that hasn't been mandated by the government I really don't know. Over a generation or two it would pretty much solve our energy problems.

But when the likes of Persimmon only make an average of £60K profit on every new home, then how could they possibly afford to do it .

[Mouldy]

1 hour ago, oldgregg said:

Can you imagine what insurance group a car covered with solar panels would be? It would get written off if you looked at it funny .

But the main reason is that if you did (and the Lightyear Zero is the car being referred to) then it would add probably 5-10 miles a day in the British summer sun.... Great for a car being used locally I guess if you don't mind the pricetag. I have seen the Lightyear in person and it's massive and not very practical.

Better to have a useful load of solar (not just the token amount that 'eco' houses have) with battery storage on every new home, office and factory and use that power. Why that hasn't been mandated by the government I really don't know. Over a generation or two it would pretty much solve our energy problems.

But when the likes of Persimmon only make an average of £60K profit on every new home, then how could they possibly afford to do it .

I’ve been saying for years that every newly built warehouse should have a roof covered in solar panels.  They would surely power some, if not all of the warehouses operations, but maybe feed some back into the grid.  Think of the generating capacity that a roof over a 500,000 square ft warehouse would provide and that is quite modest in size compared to many of the enormous distribution facilities that are springing up.  Just a few hundred yards from where we moved from in Northampton, a new ‘strategic rail freight terminal’ is being constructed, which will comprise 5 million square feet of warehouse space.

Out of sight, except to the bird population and leaving farmers fields to grow crops, instead of unsightly ‘solar farms.’

Once again, a lack of joined up thinking appears to prevail.

[Smoggy]

New builds are supposed to have car chargers as standard but no requirement for solar panels, sheer stupidity!

[annv]

I often think that all buildings that have a south facing roof should as part of planning have a strengthened roof to support solar panels rather than just strong enough to support roof tiles, it also seems wrong that good farm land should be covered in solar panels rather than growing food. John

[oldgregg]

2 hours ago, Smoggy said:

New builds are supposed to have car chargers as standard but no requirement for solar panels, sheer stupidity!

It really is. And we're still building houses with a traditional pitched roof when there are other designs that allow for more solar panels to be installed.

Some of those designs look a bit weird, but they're not uncommon in other countries and I think people would get used to them pretty quickly if that's what all newbuilds were like and if their energy costs were next to nothing. 

Heatpumps, solar etc are great if done right but many of the pilot schemes are trying to do them in the wrong way and not investing sufficiently in the right technology (mainly because they're specced as cheaply as possible as a gimmick to fool planners).

If we crack this then we don't need to build nuclear power stations in the future, and new housing developments won't be the massive drain on infrastructure that they currently are.

[SteveO]

I looked into putting solar panels onto our south-facing roof recently. The quotes I got were upward of £8000 for the system and that was without storage batteries or any other bells and whistles.  Payback was between 8 and 10 years depending on the number of panels installed and the amount  I would have got for any electricity I put back into the grid was around 5p per kWh. Not bad business for them when they charge me around 35p per kWh. 

[oldgregg]

I think that's why it's not being adopted more widely.

If we start generating enough power to be self-sufficient then why would we need so many energy companies.... So they'll be busy lobbying the government about whatever downside they've invented.

[kpnut]

2 hours ago, Mouldy said:

I’ve been saying for years that every newly built warehouse should have a roof covered in solar panels.

At Richardson’s yard, a new structure is going up. It looks like it’s going to be some sort of covered walkway between offices and toilet block (which are also being refurbed at the same time which will be nice). I wonder if the new walkway will have a solar panel roof. 

I think that all supermarkets /shopping centres and the like that provide car parking could put up similar structures, protecting shoppers from the rain but providing a structure on which to put solar panels, it would provide a lot of electricity. And as people have already said, every warehouse and other expanse of roof to have them and why not wind turbines doubling up as lampposts all along the side of motorways and other large roads. Each one could be small but it would add up to an enormous amount without us noticing. After all we don’t notice lampposts after all these years. 
 

You’ll all probably tell me it’s impossible through problems with supply etc, but I like to dream!

[kpnut]

23 minutes ago, SteveO said:

looked into putting solar panels onto our south-facing roof recently

We have them Steve, but on the old, more economic (to me) Feed in Tariff. I don’t know all the costs, wattages etc but we have 12 in a south/southwest facing roof. 
I usually run the appliances, including oven apart from startup and kettle for the little time it’s on, for no cost and all the extra then goes to the hot water tank for lovely hot water instead of the boiler doing it. The surplus then goes to the grid, but being on the old scheme, we get paid for exporting 50% whether we do export it or not. We get about £500 in total a year recompense too, generation and export. 
We have two cars, Tony’s is mainly a run-around/ farm type vehicle and mine for family trips and long journeys. This is the only reason I’d even slightly consider a hybrid car instead of Tony’s panda. To trickle charge, using the bit we don’t send to the grid. But the cars are far too costly for me to seriously think about it.