My new Green friends!

Cut....

How refreshing to hear of a green with some commonsense.

Simon Mills

98 Disco Tdi Auto

Mother"

Just seen the results - the Green candidate was elected!

I don't know whether i'm getting more attuned to these things as I get older but I was a bit miffed to hear of the local friends of the earth group advertising on the radio for new members.

The thing that made me laugh was that they met and opened their office

10-12 3 times a week. I think that gives you a fair idea of the kind of people that run and visit them don't you?

I've had an idea though, I've got some leave coming to me so I am going to join the "Pembrokeshire Friends of the Earth" without letting them see the Range Rover, wear a hemp cardigan and some sandals and see what they have to say for themselves.

I'm going deep undercover

Now you're talking :-)

D'you live in Sir Penfro then? Whereabouts?

Stuart

They will do anything to get elected!!!

Remember Greenpeace raiding the Land Rover factory?

And FOE want to cover what little countryside we have left with massive windfarms!!!

On or around Fri, 05 May 2006 10:54:14 +0100, Mother enlightened us thusly:

Blimey.

I'd vote for him.

On or around Fri, 05 May 2006 11:44:44 +0100, Mother enlightened us thusly:

Result!

Hwest area. The FOE (apt acronym don't you think?) are in Narbeth. You fancy a visit too?!

Dave

No, I live in France now, but my mother's family are from Pentlepoir (over Sardis mountain (!) from Saundersfoot) and I spent many happy summers camping on the family field.

Stuart

Now I know!

When I see an OAP with burn holes in his cardy, they aren't from pipe dottle - he was smoking it directly!

Regards,

Simonm.

Bizarre, my folks live in Sardis, or near as damn it. I still have happy summers here. Lovely on days like today, no better place to be. God awful weather for 9 months of the year. Greenlaning is abit crap too, as Pembrokeshire is a peninsular if you greenlane for too long you fall in to the sea!

Dave

Paul - xxx uttered summat worrerz funny about:

Classic!

Lee

I've always found that campaigners who *really* care about any subject are usually very reasonabe - it's the bandwaggon anti's that upset everyone.

Richard

|| I've had an idea though, I've got some leave coming to me so I am || going to join the "Pembrokeshire Friends of the Earth" without || letting them see the Range Rover, wear a hemp cardigan and some || sandals and see what they have to say for themselves. || || I'm going deep undercover

Let me know when and where. This I _gotta_ see.

(Martyn, got any spare web space where I can post the results?)

In article , beamendsltd writes

Veering wildly off-topic, but this is a knowledgeable group, and I promise not to dig into any debate: does anyone know of any pumped storage installations connected to the grid, other than Dinorwig and Ffestiniog?

It came up in conversation the other day, with our solar heating installer about wind generation: all very well managing megawatts during winter gales, but what about flat calms - where do you store the energy for a non-stormy day?

Regards,

Simonm.

Having been involved with the wind energy industry I originally held the same view that you have proposed. However there has been considerable research into the wind profiles across the UK and this is part of the reason for the sites becoming more difficult to choose. If looked at simplistically then we'd just throw thousands of turbines up on Scottish hills, however the profile this generates is very lop-sided. We actually need a specific distribution of turbines across the entire UK to provide anything approaching a reasonable energy generation alternative.

Thankfully the averaged wind energy actually matches the energy usage quite well. On a day to day basis we use more energy first thing in the morning and in the evening. This can be provided by coastline turbines which harness the onshore/offshore winds that occur at these times. On a seasonal basis we use more in the colder months where the wind speeds are higher and therefore the inshore windfarms will be able to provide the energy. So in theory with careful management it can all work.

Having said all of this I still don't believe that wind energy is a viable alternative to our exisiting energy supplies. It is however a good way of providing some of the additional requirements. A lot has been made of the required renewable energy quotas by a certain date but these are all based on our current energy requirements. If the rate of increase of energy usage continues then the additional renewable energy sources that are being installed do not have a hope of meeting the energy shortfall.

There seem to be lots of options put forwards for how to increase our output to meet this shortfall but I cannot see how any of them can actually be implemented in time.What we must do is ensure that our energy usage does not increase and preferably reduce the usage. I plan by 2010 to have implemented a partial renewable energy supply solution consisting of Photo-Voltaic (PV) cells on the roof, a wind turbine on the chimney stack and a thermal store buried under the garden. Additionally I aspire to reducing the U Value of the house (thermal loss value) to less than 0.1 which I believe is half of that currently required under the Building Regulations.

Yes it's going to cost me some fairly serious money but unless everyone takes some of these ideas on board I am fairly certain we will have a severe shortfall of energy supply not very far into the next decade.

Regards

Phil Gardiner

P.S I'm not a member of the environmental militia, I'll still be driving a (hopefully still) tax exempt series Land Rover.

You could do worse than take a look at the Centre for Alternative Technology at Machynlleth when/if you are in North Wales. There they have banks of batteries with some fairly simple switching to ensure a good charge. If it were me designing a power circuit, I'd run 12V everywhere for lighting and consumer durables (laptop, portable TV and DVD - anything which runs off a cigar lighter) and then have 240V sockets for the heavy stuuf like irons, washing machines etc. I'd then have a battery shed containing half a dozen car batteries in parallel (plenty of amps, reduced internal resistance) and charge them from a wind turbine, P-V cells and a car alternator with a water wheel (if I had a stream on site, that is). I wouldn't be making any high voltage stuff for the grid, but at least I'd cut down the amount of 'leccy I used. And no electric heating!

Stuart