The Weather

I spend much of my time here on the Nor-Cal coast.

Late summer and fall are fire season more inland, the air may be smoky, the roads may close and the electric utility may turn off the power over wide areas miles away from any fire threat.

Even at the house we need to be prepared for the lights to go out for days at a time. Many people are installing PV solar with batteries and many with backup generator sets.

Over the rainy season the roads may wash out. The steep mountain side south of Crescent City washed out last winter. Highway 101 is expected to be open only intermittently while a bridge is replaced and landslides are repaired.

So yes be prepared; have water, food in you 4-wheel drive and be ready to help the neighbors.

Today we had the coastal morning fog. This afternoon it is bright and shiny at 64 degrees F, ~ 17 degrees C. (love it)

Thanks DT
 
Those power issues like you seems to have in the US we don't have here. All systems are connected in the EU, and if the local plant goes down, they throw some switches and the power comes from further away within minutes mostly. We had problems with the old nuclear plants in Belgium (that deliver half of the power), but even with 6 of the 7 generators down (for maintenance or for technical issues), there was still enough power availeble from neighbouring countries to feed our needs. Our gouverment also pays some facilities to be on stand-by to start up gas plants when needed. But power production and distribution is not free market here, it's heavy regulated and controlled by the gouverment, altough the power plants are private bussinesses. The distribution grid is gouverment owned here. Power cuts happens sometimes, but mostly it's a matter of minutes, very exceptionally going over an hour of no power, and they are rare.
 
This time the transformer blew, or so the lineman says.

The transformer was indeed bad. It was only 6 years old. It replaced a working transformer that was over 50 years old, but was "upgraded" when the 50+ year old pole that it was on needed to be replaced.

At about 6 PM on a 90 degree day the 7200 volt primary fuse blew. A new larger fuse went off with a bang, despite all load being removed from the secondary.

The lineman said, "They don't make them like they used to." The dead transformer was a cost reduced unit made overseas that runs slightly into saturation. It failed at peak load (dinner time) as did a similar unit in Florida.

I finally got the house cool enough to go to sleep about midnight with window fans powered by my small generator. The transformer crew had arrived at about 11PM, but had not gotten the dead unit off the pole by midnight. There is power now and a new transformer on the pole. It is even smaller than the one it replaced.

I may try to get a scope and THD meter on my line voltage later today. The previous unit made about 3% THD on a mildly loaded day. The line voltage in Florida with a plastic case pole transformer would peak at about 7 or 8% THD in the middle of a hot summer afternoon.

The picture shows the original 1970's vintage transformer in Florida on a typical summer afternoon. The THD was just under 3%. I can't find the 8% picture.
 

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I'm disappointed. I had expected at least a gun cabinet, tackle box and a set of assorted scary and sharp knives for gutting critters?

Bill, thats not survival gear…….that’s just daily use items! :p

George you’d appreciate what they’re doing here to mitigate peak use hours, duke energy is putting in battery stations! They have just about completed the one that’s a quarter mile from the house (I can see it through the woods) it amounts to six large shipping containers full of lithium batteries. We are the 5.5 megawatt in cape San Blas Duke Energy Florida to build its largest battery storage projects yet | Duke Energy | News Center
 
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A nice 28-30degC here in sunny Blighty (U.K.).

The battery in the conservatory thermometer got changed and zeroed the max temp.. it hit 57.7 degC with the windows and doors open yesterday. The max it has got to is 67.7degC but with the windows and doors closed.. well 67.7 is the max recorded given it stops and won’t go higher!
 
The Earths' climate is dynamic. It has always changed and always will, regardless of human activity. A mere 10,000 years ago the ice was more than a mile thick in the spot where I sit and type right now. That's a small slice of geological time for such a radical change in the local weather. The current alarm over global warming is based on the unspoken notion that the climate is stable, so the entire argument has no basis in reality. Modern scientific measurements have only confirmed what the climate has been doing forever. No real cause for alarm unless you're planning on living for another 10,000 years.

Not really. Climate science isn't "common sense." It really IS a science and can't be reduced to simplistic "analyses" like this. Climate science isn't based on any notion of climate stability. That issue was discussed and discarded in the early days of climate science. It's based on the rates of change in O2 and temps and LOTS of other things. I suggest some deeper reading before forming opinions.

I've said it in the past (though my posts seem to get removed...), few here are climate scientists so be careful about passing on conjecture as fact. Would you accept recommendations from an inexperienced newbie in amp design and construction? Note I have a graduate degree in environmental issues (science, economics and policy), have a decent grasp of climate science, and yet I'm far from a climate scientist. Do I think climate science is fully settled? No. But then, some would say neither is evolution. Einstein made a mess of Newton, yet we still used Newtonian concepts to design most things we build (planes, buildings, etc.).

This post isn't aimed specifically at you techtool. It is just amusing to me to listen to otherwise well educated people pontificate on subjects they really don't understand. I can't wrap my head around what goes on in a constant current source. I wouldn't pretend to advise someone on how to build one.

And FYI, climate science is far more settled than most sciences… The one place where there is SOME level of debate (though even that is going away) is the role of human involvement in the changes. But if you look at the raw data showing climate indices and human indices...
 
Not really. He talked about sweeping up the leafy debris on the forest floor. Too messy (pretty close to what he said)! What he proposed would ultimately have caused more fires by depriving soil of nutrients and killing off trees. Forest management is far more than cleaning up debris on the forest floor.

I meant in a general forest management sense, to ultimately reduce the severity of fires. I don't know what he said specifically, and it would appear he doesn't know either.;)

jeff
 
Not really. Climate science isn't "common sense." It really IS a science and can't be reduced to simplistic "analyses" like this. Climate science isn't based on any notion of climate stability. That issue was discussed and discarded in the early days of climate science. It's based on the rates of change in O2 and temps and LOTS of other things. I suggest some deeper reading before forming opinions.

I've said it in the past (though my posts seem to get removed...), few here are climate scientists so be careful about passing on conjecture as fact. Would you accept recommendations from an inexperienced newbie in amp design and construction? Note I have a graduate degree in environmental issues (science, economics and policy), have a decent grasp of climate science, and yet I'm far from a climate scientist. Do I think climate science is fully settled? No. But then, some would say neither is evolution. Einstein made a mess of Newton, yet we still used Newtonian concepts to design most things we build (planes, buildings, etc.).

This post isn't aimed specifically at you techtool. It is just amusing to me to listen to otherwise well educated people pontificate on subjects they really don't understand. I can't wrap my head around what goes on in a constant current source. I wouldn't pretend to advise someone on how to build one.

And FYI, climate science is far more settled than most sciences… The one place where there is SOME level of debate (though even that is going away) is the role of human involvement in the changes. But if you look at the raw data showing climate indices and human indices...

When the last chapter is written climate will only be a footnote. Climate will be small potatoes (pun intended).

We will be back in the Stone Age with a much reduced population due to shortages of fuel, clean water, food and we humans will have drown in our own pollution.

Co2 will not have been the problem.

Go dig up some copper and beryllium to save the planet.

Thanks DT
 
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