the RC (radio control) and electric rideables thread

[Gibson99]

They all look rather yellow/orange, old incandescent technology?

If so then they would certainly not be approved of here, I had someone come round to check my house efficiency rating a few weeks ago, now the fact that I still had an incandescent light bulb in the under stairs cupboard is online for the entire nation to see!

This neighborhood is about 5-6 years old. All the houses came with CFL bulbs with crappy 2700k color temp, though I've replaced most interior lights with LED as the CFLs failed. Somehow the CFLs outside in the elements have not failed yet. The street lights appear to be old school sodium halogen or something - they take several minutes to get up to full brightness once they turn on.

A mile or so away, where they just finished some road construction and installed new traffic lights and street lights - that's all LED now.

 

[kamkar]

I would never point fingers at anyone in a environmental regard, i assume most are aware of the challenges and do what they personally can in a timely and financial responsible manner.

My interest are far more focused on the people higher up, to be honest i would like to inspect the homes of really avid outspoken environmental politicians and rich people, and see what they really do personally.
And i am amazed that if they say the enviormental challenges are so big, then why it is still legal to buy a car that might do 1 mile to the gallon, cuz that is legal here but of course you will be paying the highest environmental taxes on that car, but with a fuel consumption like that the taxes would still be the least of your worries.

If i was in charge only the 10 most fuel efficient vehicles in each class would be legal to sell or operate, i would even dispense of the right to run old timers, even if it would hurt me bad as a nostalgic person.
Cuz to me that's responsible, what they allow for now not so much, often a down right joke.

 

[Nigel]

My interest are far more focused on the people higher up, to be honest i would like to inspect the homes of really avid outspoken environmental politicians and rich people, and see what they really do personally.

If I have their postcode then I can view their home's energy performance certificate here.

But I'm not sure why we are making so much effort to reduce power consumption, because as long as the power comes from a zero carbon source then I can't see any problem with using a lot of it? The effort should be in switching to only zero carbon power sources, and that doesn't mean no petrol, just that it has to be synthetic green petrol, aviation fuel, shipping fuel or whatever.

 

[kamkar]

Houses also have energy certificates here, but not in regard to power usage, but rather the insulation level of the house.

So a A 2020 rated house you can almost heat with a single candle, but even today most homes are still c - d - e level.
Which is still good cuz only a few decades ago insulation was not really something Danes bothered with.

The housing blocks i grew up in had nothing under the roof tiles, not even a weather membrane, only about 10 CM of something on the "floor" of the roof space.
So much so that in winters with snowfall it would melt pretty fast and form huge icicles hanging from the roof.

The current insulation classes for Danish houses are A 2020 - A 2015 - A 2010 - B - C - D - E - F- G

My grandmothers house got the space between the walls filled and this was in the mid 70ties, and highly controversial back then i think only as a result of spare insurance money after the first floor more or less burned down.
And most of the repairs ASO getting done by free by family.

 

[SawMaster]

The concept of public knowing what's going on at your house would never fly here in the US. It's not that we have something to hide, rather that you have no right to know about these things. And any consumption-based rating would be worthless anyway. For instance, my last house was heated by electricity and my old-fashioned HF Ham rig was a tube (valve) type with an old inefficient transformer power supply which alone used more power than some small houses do. Can't afford anything equal and newer so unless you want to give me $1500 don't even go there. The electrical heat was sectoined into the rooms I used only, and as such was more efficient that the gas furnace (which was probably unsafe anyway). Unless you're paying my bills you have nothing to say about what I use.

But a bit back toward topic, a friend who has a nice DJI might be fixing up a cheap "indoor" drone for me to learn with. Tiny little beggar, he's got 2 and the older one needs some work which I'm going to try to see if he will do while we're stuck at home for the next ??? days/weeks/ whatever. So hopefully I'll have another toy soon!

Phil

 

[Gibson99]

The concept of public knowing what's going on at your house would never fly here in the US. It's not that we have something to hide, rather that you have no right to know about these things. And any consumption-based rating would be worthless anyway. For instance, my last house was heated by electricity and my old-fashioned HF Ham rig was a tube (valve) type with an old inefficient transformer power supply which alone used more power than some small houses do. Can't afford anything equal and newer so unless you want to give me $1500 don't even go there. The electrical heat was sectoined into the rooms I used only, and as such was more efficient that the gas furnace (which was probably unsafe anyway). Unless you're paying my bills you have nothing to say about what I use.

But a bit back toward topic, a friend who has a nice DJI might be fixing up a cheap "indoor" drone for me to learn with. Tiny little beggar, he's got 2 and the older one needs some work which I'm going to try to see if he will do while we're stuck at home for the next ??? days/weeks/ whatever. So hopefully I'll have another toy soon!

Phil

Tiny whoops are fun. I just installed the silverware firmware on my old jjrc H8 mini so now I can fly it in acro mode. Next I'll be adding an fpv camera, just as soon as I can figure out how to protect the relatively large cloverleaf antenna. If it survives,I might get a multi protocol module for my controller so I can fly the toys using a real controller instead of the tiny toy one.

 

[Gibson99]

the fact that I still had an incandescent light bulb in the under stairs cupboard is online for the entire nation to see!

Forgot to mention... I think the only incandescent bulbs in my house are in the oven (obviously LED and CFL are not an option in that kind of heat!), in some old flashlighs, and in my son's lava lamp -because it actually needs the heat from the bulb to melt the wax and function normally.

Even in our cars there are very few incandescent bulbs, including in my 2006 Toyota RAV4. I haven't changed the turn signals to led because I don't want to add resistors or change the flasher unit. But headlights are LED and hid, brake/tail were led from the factory, as were rear side markers. Reverse lights and all interior lights are charged to led. My wife's 2018 Chrysler Pacifica Van has all LED interior lights from the factory, and I'll soon be switching the headlights to LED once I find a set that fits inside the projector housing.

 

[Nigel]

Forgot to mention... I think the only incandescent bulbs in my house are in the oven (obviously LED and CFL are not an option in that kind of heat!), in some old flashlighs, and in my son's lava lamp -because it actually needs the heat from the bulb to melt the wax and function normally.

Even in our cars there are very few incandescent bulbs, including in my 2006 Toyota RAV4. I haven't changed the turn signals to led because I don't want to add resistors or change the flasher unit. But headlights are LED and hid, brake/tail were led from the factory, as were rear side markers. Reverse lights and all interior lights are charged to led. My wife's 2018 Chrysler Pacifica Van has all LED interior lights from the factory, and I'll soon be switching the headlights to LED once I find a set that fits inside the projector housing.

I also have them in the microwave and the fridge even though it is a very high efficiency fridge, I guess they are more water resistant than LED bulbs, otherwise I would replace the fridge one.

The house efficiency rating was intended to allow people to upgrade their houses with better insulation, better boilers/electric storage heaters, solar panels etc. without having to worry about not getting a return on their investment if they moved house too soon. Any improvements should be reflected in the energy rating and thus reflected in the value of the house on sale. Before the energy rating people were losing a lot of money on improvements so normally not bothering. It was never intended as a monitoring system although it now seems to have become a bit of a status symbol, people are aiming for an A rating just for the status of having one, and getting their homes reevaluated even when they don't need to.

In the first quarter of this year our electricity has been 36% fossil fueled, down from 69% 7 years ago, so in terms of carbon emissions the difference between an incandescent and LED bulb is rapidly becoming a non-issue. Of course I would always choose the LED, the cost per year leaves me better off and they produce nicer light, assuming you can get the nice white ones instead of the yellow ones the supermarkets seem to hugely favor! With Boris having ordered enough wind turbines to make our electricity zero carbon by the end of the decade, the carbon emissions from light bulbs issue is going to disappear.

 

[Gibson99]

I can't wait for solar and local battery storage to get more affordable. Not to get off the grid - I'd stay connected in case solar wasn't enough to run the ac on really hot days. Plus on days where I don't use all the solar production I could conceivably sell that excess power back to the grid.

I'd also like an electric car, but they're also beyond my budget right now. Maybe in 5 years there will be a better selection of used ones on the market - with longer range then current stuff like the Nissan leaf, fiat 500e, Kia Nero EV, and RAV4 EV, all of which only have ~100 miles range. In a metropolis as large and sprawling as Houston, it's easy to drive over 100 miles in a single day. In addition, AC is very important here, and probably uses a not-insignificant amount of battery, so whatever I get needs to have at least 200 miles range, esp since fast charging, even Tesla superchargers, aren't anywhere near as available as gas stations, so I'd basically be relying on home charging most of the time.

 

[kamkar]

My fridge light blew 7 years ago, its not replaced. TBH i find the concept of a light in a fridge strange, i have no problem seeing what is in there without it.
Maybe a family fridge jam packed with stuff, but my mostly empty bachelor fridge do fine with no light.
If i was to provide the fridge myself i would get a even smaller one too, and save a little power there too.

I would also go EV car if only i had a way to charge it at home, but that option pretty much don't exist for people in a apartment.

PS: Several companies in a little town burned down a few days ago, due to a electric bicycling recharging malfunction.

If i was so lucky to be able to build / get a little house, and some green power there, i would not sell excess back to the grid, even if that might even make me a income on my cheap power.
But as a Dane i think i am forced to do that, otherwise a grid like that in your house can not be established. ( which annoy me and my sense of freedom )

When i drive to my mothers place i am passing what look to be a new solar power plant getting build ( solar as in heating water not generating electric )
And it do make sense using the sun to at least partly heat up the water, that then get circulated to houses to generate heating and hot water there.
I think i would also like to have a setup like that on my house, smaller of course just to heat that one house.

The plant go online in May this year and the 8.272 m2 large setup generate 3.100 MWh ( not sure if thats a month or annual ) but it is about half of what the local little towns power plant generate.
Should mean their old pellet and oil/gas burning furnaces ramp down quite a bit, and houses in the area heated with gas change over ( gas & oil as home heating get banned withing a few years in Denmark )

 

[Nigel]

I can't wait for solar and local battery storage to get more affordable. Not to get off the grid - I'd stay connected in case solar wasn't enough to run the ac on really hot days. Plus on days where I don't use all the solar production I could conceivably sell that excess power back to the grid.

I'd also like an electric car, but they're also beyond my budget right now. Maybe in 5 years there will be a better selection of used ones on the market - with longer range then current stuff like the Nissan leaf, fiat 500e, Kia Nero EV, and RAV4 EV, all of which only have ~100 miles range. In a metropolis as large and sprawling as Houston, it's easy to drive over 100 miles in a single day. In addition, AC is very important here, and probably uses a not-insignificant amount of battery, so whatever I get needs to have at least 200 miles range, esp since fast charging, even Tesla superchargers, aren't anywhere near as available as gas stations, so I'd basically be relying on home charging most of the time.

Here everyone sells their spare solar power to the grid, at a higher price than they pay to get it back again, so local battery storage is pointless, that costs instead of making a profit! Once in the grid it either gets used by others, or stored in hydro pumped storage, or we are starting to get a bit of grid based lithium battery storage to make up for the loss of inertia in big gas/steam turbines that used to be used for very short term peaks and dips in power but are now disappearing. But wind is now cheaper than solar, and it works in the winter when we use most power, so I think solar is going into decline here. Of course in your part of the world it produces power when you want it most for air conditioning so makes more sense.

When i drive to my mothers place i am passing what look to be a new solar power plant getting build ( solar as in heating water not generating electric )
And it do make sense using the sun to at least partly heat up the water, that then get circulated to houses to generate heating and hot water there.
I think i would also like to have a setup like that on my house, smaller of course just to heat that one house.

Solar water heating doesn't seem to work too well on a small scale, you end up heating your house only when there is sun and it doesn't need heating!

In a few years time your town level water heating will probably come from the waste heat from green hydrogen production from electrolysis of water using wind turbine electricity, about half the power used turns into heat and using it for town heating is probably cheaper than trying to recover it in other ways. We are going to need a huge amount of green hydrogen if all the commitments to net zero are going to be achieved.

 

[kamkar]

Yeah the water are just a means of transporting the heat, and the sun heating it a little is just so electrical or whatever don't have to do all the work, and this also make sense to me.
And yeah electrolysis is also about the only way i can see being used to store surplus wind power, this will also make it possible to sell our "wind power" to far away places where it can not get transported to using electrical transmission wires.
It must be salt water we do that with, cuz we Danes don't have too much fresh water to go around, as more and more wells are capped due to pollution.


Have anyone done the math on electrolysis from say wind power, so say you use 1 Mw to split water, how much power can you make from the Hydrogen you split off ?

It would be nice if that was 1Mw too, or maybe even more, but i somehow doubt that.

Of course if we could get the fusion reactors to work you could generate like +100 Mw from each 1Mw of split hydrogen

 

[Nigel]

It would be nice if that was 1Mw too, or maybe even more, but i somehow doubt that.

It used to be about .3MW in the conversion to hydrogen, but it seems to be about .5MW now, plus a lot of heat. The heat energy can be recovered though, so it is not all wasted, some of it could be turned back into electricity for a second pass.

When you use the hydrogen you will also lose some power, but fuel cells for cars/boats/planes etc are pretty efficient, as is using it for heating/cooking, even using it for gas turbine based electricity generation is not too bad.

Using salt water seems a bad idea! The salt has to go somewhere, but maybe you can make a profit from selling it as salt.

 

[old4570]

F16 project ... I think it wants to fly .

There were problems , like the motor thrust angles ( Corrected ) .

 

[Gibson99]

Can't remember if I posted this already...

 

[old4570]

Calamity Jane = Closer !

 

[SawMaster]

Yep- far less tendency to 'pitch up' as it had been doing.

Phil

 

[old4570]

It still hunts up and down ..
I put a little more lead in the nose , so hopefully find Neutral ( Level flight )
Also did some serious cooling for the motor . ( Might need a new one if this one has lost too much power from being cooked )

 

[Gibson99]

Yeah it might keep the props on, but also destroy the coils, not to mention what it'll do to the balance

 

[kamkar]

It is amazing what the human brain can come up with to solve a problem.