CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Debate!

Will the wind go away??

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  1. crowriver
    Member

    It has quite a lot to do with cycling. Bicycles require relatively few resources to manufacture compared to motorised vehicles, and do not require fossil fuels to run. Neither do most bicycles require much electricity: a few batteries for lights, and a small (but growing) number of electric assist pedelecs are around.

    I suppose if cycling were to fill some of the niche currently slated for electric cars, eg. transporting small amounts of cargo, children, etc. then many more will require electric assist, at least in areas with hills. Still more efficient than petrol/electric hybrid cars or entirely electric cars. Less weight/inertia for a start, lower speed requirements, lower range required...

    Posted 12 years ago #

  2. steveo
    Member

    Power requirements for electric bicycles are orders of magnatude lower than cars, as you'd expect. A bicycle can go fairly fast with as little as 300W of power with a little pedal assist. The Chevrolet Volt has an 11kW motor.

    Posted 12 years ago #

  3. ruggtomcat
    Member

    What are the batteries made of tho?

    Posted 12 years ago #

  4. wee folding bike
    Member

    My bikes make most of electricity they use. I've got the odd battery light.

    Posted 12 years ago #

  5. cb
    Member

    "I am a fan of electricity pylons.

    For me they are like red phoneboxes or something"

    Rich, bored and unpopular – Lord Ashcroft is the perfect pylon designer

    (last three paras)

    "Of course, the new pylon will be hated, probably because it'll look awful, but it'll be hated even if it doesn't. But, as soon as new pylons start appearing, all the existing ones will be transformed overnight into "the old-fashioned sort of pylon", "the pylons of our youth", "how pylons used to be". The whole grid will be red-telephone-boxed in a heartbeat and we will gaze at our current metal-scarred landscape through rose-tinted spectacles forever after."

    Posted 12 years ago #

  6. kaputnik
    Moderator

    A light-heated start to the morning, thanks for that cb :)

    Posted 12 years ago #

  7. chdot
    Admin

    "EDINBURGH is set to be at the cutting edge of global research into tidal energy, with plans for the development of a pioneering test centre in Newington."

    http://edinburghnews.scotsman.com/topstories/City-to-be-cutting-edge.6777824.jp

    (Is KB in Newington?)

    Where did the last 30 years go?

    Posted 12 years ago #

  8. kaputnik
    Moderator

    There's a big Pelamis fabrication unti down at Leith Docks

    Posted 12 years ago #

  9. chdot
    Admin

    http://www.pelamiswave.com/aboutus/about-us

    Posted 12 years ago #

  10. steveo
    Member

    A 30-metre diameter basin will allow boffins to test drive renewable technologies in controlled, but almost identical, environments to that they would encounter on the open sea.

    Boffins, seriously! What is wrong with engineers?

    Posted 12 years ago #

  11. chdot
    Admin

    "What is wrong with engineers?"

    They are fine - until journalists and politicians get at them...

    Posted 12 years ago #

  12. amir
    Member

    I think that the wave energy tank was where this building is now

    http://flic.kr/p/9PgBgB

    By the way - how do you get the picture to load

    Posted 12 years ago #

  13. Arellcat
    Moderator

    What is wrong with engineers?

    Engineers design bridges and ships and skyscrapers, wear business suits with yellow hi-viz vests, and do a lot of pointing. Welders wear orange hi-viz over rigger boots and t-shirts.

    Boffins wear white coats, work only in laboratories breaking pieces of metal and mixing chemicals, and they all have white silvery flowing hair.

    Hope this helps.

    Posted 12 years ago #

  14. kaputnik
    Moderator

    Boffins wear white coats, work only in laboratories

    and back rooms!

    Posted 12 years ago #

  15. amir
    Member

    Here it is

    Thanks for the tip chdot

    Posted 12 years ago #

  16. chdot
    Admin

    "Glasgow is forecast to becoming a leading international force in renewable energy, with Strathclyde University and the Sustainable Glasgow consortium leading the way."

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/jun/02/super-cities-to-lead-manufacturing-renaissance

    Posted 12 years ago #

  17. chdot
    Admin

    Even more slightly off topic -

    "A NEW "centre of excellence" based in the Capital is being created to tackle one of the greatest computing challenges of the next decade - producing faster, more efficient software. Researchers at the University of Edinburgh are to work with microprocessor designers ARM to improve how computers maximise their processing capacity."

    http://edinburghnews.scotsman.com/topstories/Centre-gets-up-to-speed.6778368.jp

    So will we need more electricity for more computers or less for more efficient ones?

    More cars (electric or otherwise) and more roads to travel further to work or more sitting at home (or nice cafés) 'teleworking'??

    ("Microsoft has provided a look at how it plans to bring Windows to more mobile devices in the future, leveraging ARM processors and using HTML5 as the basis of a new app platform"

    http://appleinsider.com/articles/11/06/01/microsoft_demonstrates_windows_8_with_html5_apps.html )

    Posted 12 years ago #

  18. Stepdoh
    Member

    Into Eternity definitely worth a watch. Slight pretentious, but was watched at a wee hour while not-sleeping in a cot bed at the sick kids (Chicken pox gone bad) and it managed to keep me awake.

    I'm fairly pro-nuclear as i think it relatively clean and safe for a short term perspective and it is really pretty great at providing base energy needs, with a renewable on top of this and a hydro backup to switch on at peak. (Such as the awesome bond-base Cruachan).

    I honestly think we could do it.

    The film did pose an interesting question in that although we can fairly safely vitrify, can and store this stuff, we've got no real way of telling people 100,000 years from now to keep well clear of it.

    We just don't have the visual language to do so and have such a short history that we really cant plan in Geological time scales. Just think of how previous generations of tomb raiders reacted when they came across tomb doors festooned with skulls and promises of death and lurgy.

    The best thinking was to bury it and not mark where it is and just hope no-one found it.

    Posted 12 years ago #

  19. chdot
    Admin

    "awesome bond-base Cruachan"??

    "hewn out tunnels in the style of early James Bond sets"?

    Posted 12 years ago #

  20. steveo
    Member

    High efficiency computing is big business at the moment has been for the last few years, doing more work with less electricity was one of the big selling points for AMD's CPUs for the last 10 years and Intel got on the band wagon a couple of years ago with their Core brand.

    ARM is very different type of chip though, their design runs basically all the smart phones, massively efficient but more difficult to code for and fairly niche due to not being supported by either OS X or Windows.

    The power requirements for your basic mainstream (think dells) web browsing computer will be down to Comodor 64 levels in the next five years I reckon, that won't hurt the governments targets for co2 emissions when offices start upgrading to lower power requirement machines. At home it'll be a fairly light change from a 300w desktop to about 20w not that you'll really notice that on your monthly power bill.

    Posted 12 years ago #

  21. Stepdoh
    Member

    Ben Cruachan is cool, I reccommend the tour if anyone is passing that way, and even better: ** Green tourism offer – Visitors arriving by public transport or bicycle will gain free entry** *How to drag a topic back on track* :)

    Does make you wonder why we find it so difficult to do large scale public works these days.

    Single tram line vs. hewing out a mountain.

    Posted 12 years ago #

  22. chdot
    Admin

    "not that you'll really notice that on your monthly power bill"

    The related issue of course is more personal devices = more web use, wifi, 3G, 4G etc. + more server farms which need electricity and produce large amounts of heat.

    Coming soon - iCloud.

    Posted 12 years ago #

  23. steveo
    Member

    Often these cloud projects are about utilising servers more efficiently. Amazon for example introduced its high performance cloud computer service a few years ago becuase it had these huge data farms running at low utilisation it needed these farms to cope with peak demand and fall over but off peak an individual can higher a lot of computing power for very reasonable money meaning that that individual doesn't need to set up their own server farm for their high performance needs.

    Heriot watt (I believe) used to heat its buildings with the waste heat from the server farm...

    Another way to look at the mobile devices is that it moves the electricity load from the user to the server farm. Instead of a 300w desktop i can do all my browsing on a 5w mobile. I'm sure there is some efficiency gain in doing this.

    In fact given how little i use the laptop now in favour of just using my phone i suspect that there is some efficiency gain just from people putting up with smaller screens.

    Posted 12 years ago #

  24. chdot
    Admin

    "Home working: Why can't everyone telework?"

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11879241

    Posted 12 years ago #

  25. kaputnik
    Moderator

    Because you can't cycle from the bedroom to the living room?

    Posted 12 years ago #

  26. chdot
    Admin

    "Because you can't cycle from the bedroom to the living room?"

    Perhaps you need a unicycle.

    Posted 12 years ago #

  27. cb
    Member

    Scotsman.com | Blow me! An urban wind farm

    "EDINBURGH could soon be home to the UK's first community-owned urban wind turbine.

    The development, by community groups Greener Leith and PEDAL - Portobello Transition Town, is planned for land at the Seafield Waste Water Treatment Works. It is hoped that the area can generate electricity to sell locally."

    Posted 12 years ago #

  28. DaveC
    Member

    Good news! We've seen these in use in London when visiting relatives (Brixton Road & Camberwell new Road) and last week when I was on Holiday in Scapa Flow I saw that Red wave machine which looks like a huge snake made up of 25m sections of floating tube.

    Posted 12 years ago #

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