Prices of the electricity we use to charge

[Peter.Bridge]

how much more freedom do they need? They can already say anything, go anywhere, buy anything (except eternal youth for the moment), choose how much tax they donate/pay to the country that gives them slaves and still resent those who need welfare?
My daughter worked in Washington DC for nearly a year. She explained to me the workaholic attitude of her American colleagues. That made me shudder of the idea of Musk and his robots taking over that beautiful country.

I worked for a multi national finance company, and there was quite a difference in culture between the US and Europe divisions. We were rolling out a finance system worldwide (UK based project). The US sponsors of the project thought many of the Europeans resistant to having this system imposed on them, and I remember on one occasion they flew across to France to tear a strip off the French Division Senior Management - they weren't allowed on site - much to their indignation "Do you know who we are". We implemented the project across Europe - just needed building trust with the various stakeholders and taking account of their concerns.

 

[Woosh]

Who cares about dividends? I took a gamble that Trump was going to win, so I bought Tesla shares at $252 on Nov 5th. I sold half of them three days later for $325. That's paid for my Xmas and allowed me to buy one of your TSDZ8s, so we all won. I'll keep the rest for long term growth.

Spot on timing on Tesla shares. That reminds me of the discussion on Gamestop. I tend to stay away from anything that move too rapidly.

Who cares about dividends? I took a gamble that Trump was going to win, so I bought Tesla shares at $252 on Nov 5th. I sold half of them three days later for $325. That's paid for my Xmas and allowed me to buy one of your TSDZ8s, so we all won. I'll keep the rest for long term growth. Trump will do such a good chance sorting everything out, that his lot will be in power for the next two or three terms, so I can't see it crumbling, but I'm still thinking that the other lot are going to do something drastic to upset it all. They've gone too quiet. Get ready for a new pandemic or nuclear war. What else can they do?

The Dems are too woke to do anything like that. A pandemic will be a rerun of the last cycle, I don't think they fancy cleaning up after Trump again. Nuclear war? With whom? I can't see that either. The EU and the UK cannot continue to support Ukraine without the USA lead, the most we can do this side for Ukraine is peace keeping and rebuilding Ukraine. Over time, the Ukrainians themselves will have to be militarily stronger. They are very well educated people.

 

[guerney]

6 months from now when the fallout and backlash of the tariffs begin to bite and inflation rises, the US standard of living will begin to drop, Trump will blame Musk and Musk will retreat to X and go on a rant about what a fool Trump is.

Trump deported about the same number as Obama - he can't deport too many, he needs to keep some scapegoats about, to blame for the effects of the massive wealth suction and suckery which has occurred between ordinary Americans and the 1% since the 50s. Most of the middle class has disappeared, and not just in the US. In 40 years, the stock market has increased by 5000%, and real earning wages have increased by only 14%. 50% of the US own stocks. The rest suffer but don't generally vote, and those that did have been deceived again by the 1% and will become relatively ever poorer, trapped, and more angry.

There's certainly good motivation for techbros of that ilk to continue bigly bankrolling a similarly massive steaming societal bowel movement this side of the pond.

The sphinter of education is tighter here, protecting us, they'd have to bigly increase the BS they're feeding the bowels of the UK with, and loosen that sphincter for about a decade, before they can squeeze that similarly massive steaming turd through. We are already seeing signs of societal constipation on this forum, but if at first they don't succeed, they'll try and try again. Techno Nazism has never worked, but of course there's so much more techno banging about now than there ever has been, throroughly interspersed and infesting all of our lives. When it has eventually failed, collapsed by the weight of such colossal societal craps, it's left the vast majority of the remaining population poorer.

I'm sure that when the techbros started pushing weird daft fringe beliefs at people online to increase viewing duration and therefore ad revenue, they didn't expect such large swathes of the population believing it all. Now they have their new money printing superpower, they'll use it perpetually to remake the world, into one which skews everything possible to their advantage. Then nail the exit shut.

We should block all travel from the US now, to prevent becoming infected with measles and other diseases there are vaccines for.

Australia has recently imposed an age limit on social media use. There shoiuld be an age limit of 18 or younger, and 18 or over, everywhere.

 

[saneagle]

Spot on timing on Tesla shares. That reminds me of the discussion on Gamestop. I tend to stay away from anything that move too rapidly.

The rising of the shares wasn't a gamble. It was only a question of whether the dems were going to cheat enough to win. They got swamped, so had to give up. The trucks carrying votes around were nearly all found and tracked.

 

[Woosh]

The trucks carrying votes around were nearly all found and tracked.

You believe in that stuff? The Dems couldn't cheat because they are wokes, as simple as.
If you take the moral high ground, then you have to accept the consequences like not sending seals to take out Trump and Vance.

 

[Ghost1951]

All the water around our country is moving. In some areas it moves very fast. In the Severn estuary, the tidal rise is about 10 metres, so as well as kinetic energy, it has huge potential energy. All it takes is for someone to extract it, and yes there are tidal energy extraction schemes presently working in the UK. Perhaps you should check before making yourself look silly.

The whole concept of solar energy is to make and use energy in such a way that it doesn't cause global warming, especially the sea. When you bring cables from Africa to UK, you have made a giant space heater, until we have viable superconductors for transmission. To us, it doesn't matter how much energy they can make in the desert, when we can't get it. You might as well point to Bill Gates's bank account as a source of money when you go shopping in Lidl next week.

So why has it never been developed past proof of concept? My guess is that it hasn't worked that well. I'd be very pleased to see some proper commercial installation. I'm not against it at all - IF it can be made to work in a cost effective fashion.

Ouarzazate Solar Power costs $0.12 per kilowatt hour. Built on the scale I am talking about for export to Europe, the price would fall dramatically and certainly far enough to soak up the transmission costs.

As an engineer, I m rather surprised you are so wrong about the under sea cables and transmission loss. You might be right IF the power was being transmitted as AC. That would involve a lot of waste, because of reactive power losses, but no one is suggesting that. Properly dimensioned cables using standard materials run with very high DC voltages are very efficient and do not involve charging and discharging a giant capacitor also known as the Mediterranean Sea. HVDC undersea cables lose only 3% per 1000 km which is much less than AC transmission losses (7% per 1000 km).

The Sea Change in Long-Distance Electrical Power Delivery

The growth of renewable energy is not only reshaping the way society consumes power, it is disrupting conventional thinking in the energy in

www.theearthandi.org

Morocco-UK subsea power link would be world’s longest | en:former

Linking distant countries with different weather patterns could see renewable energy play a greater security of supply role. More information on the en:former!

www.en-former.com

 

[lenny]

If you take the moral high ground, then you have to accept the consequences like not sending seals to take out Trump and Vance.

Seals live in the sea. The only seals in fresh water are fed by humans in zoos and theme parks. Loch ness is a lake!.

 

[Ghost1951]

Australia has recently imposed an age limit on social media use. There shoiuld be an age limit of 18 or younger, and 18 or over, everywhere.

I think it shouldn't be 18.

It should be 48.

 

[Woosh]

So why has it never been developed past proof of concept? My guess is that it hasn't worked that well.

You are right there. La Rance, in France (St-Malo) is the world's largest tidal installation. I have driven across it a few times. Very impressive view up and down the river.
It's capable of producing 240MW at peak but not working out that way.
The cost of production is about 12 cents / kwh. Much more expensive than solar and wind.

 

[guerney]

I think it shouldn't be 18.

It should be 48.

Let's meet in the middle: upper limit of 18.0000000001 years. On the bright side, the American Repuplic's democracy was founded by people educated in the classics, modelled on Rome's and may fall for the same reason ie. too much money guiding and enriching the political and upper slasses. And eventually rebuild better. On the other hand, although you can't fool all of the people all of the time... you don't need to, if you can monitor and control them - it's more possible for leaders to lock themselces into power using thumpy techno magic now than at any time in history. The future is orange.

 

[Ghost1951]

You are right there. La Rance, in France (St Malo) is the world's largest tidal installation.
It's capable of producing 240MW at peak but not working out that way.
The cost of production is about 12 cents / kwh. Much ,more expensive than solar and wind.

You know - if it works, I'm all for it. The lack of installed capacity suggests that it doesn't or maybe the issue is the intermittency of it. I don't know.

Saneagle is I think not correct to dismiss the kind of schemes that were proposed by Destertec. The reason that never got off the ground was the instability of the Maghreb. When Ghadafi fell and Libya turned into a terrorist mad house, finance dried up. I remain convinced that in time, the vision will be brought to reality. The idea of hundreds of terawatt hours of solar energy just heating up sand in the Sahara is too wasteful. 1% of the Sahara could generate 24% of the planet's current electricity demand and it is only 2500 miles away. We would lose only 9% of the power in transmission losses because of HVDC. We currently lose 8% of our domestic electric power in transmission losses, mostly in the low voltage AC local distribution systems.

 

[lenny]

UK economy stalls showing challenge for growth

UK economy barely grew between July and September

The chancellor says she is "not satisfied" by the latest growth figures, which were weaker than expected.

www.bbc.co.uk

Tories close in on Labour in polls as Badenoch’s appointment takes votes off Farage

The weekly tracker poll by Techne UK for The Independent shows that the Tories have taken six points off Labour’s lead since Kemi Badenoch became leader

www.independent.co.uk