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Probably the now antique CATIA program (Dassault Systèmes). When I was a young engineer this was pretty much the standard in contractor’s shops and it is still going strongish after 50 years as 3DSATIA but I’d say that Autodesk now probably has more adherents.
The AMD 7100 is a VR ready workstation card – expensive but under £500 depending on dram size. link
I’m guessing that VR might be a useful productivity tool in that sort of mapping/layering business.
(I’m not sure what LLT is, I must have missed that post)
Without knowledge of their needs, I’d shoot from the hip and suggest that maybe a Workstation Graphics card should be considered e.g. a Radeon FirePro WX series card might be useful if they are manipulating any of their geo/topo maps (sounds like they are doing a lot of Photoshop or similar layering) .
Pity Bruce isn’t on the site, he could hint at a lot of reasons the MOD is so bad, not least that they got rid of anyone with the slightest technical background/competence or practical experience and staffed up with chinless wonders who were ‘well-connected’ yes men. The solution would be to connect the nether ends of the well-connected with size 11 steel toe-capped boots!
I’m afraid to me the controller is a bit like the EM system on a modern car. I looked at it out of interest and found that there was no obvious way to change it in the ways I wanted, then said ‘screw it’ I’m more likely to break it than improve it. There may well be the cell level monitoring you suggest but tbh I did not find it during my delving.
Over-arching all this of course is a very simple user level interface, and shutdown/start-up controls. The house trips ‘should’ protect anyone working on the house circuit, but it is nice to know that there are ways of powering down a 6KwH box just in case!
Look carefully at the graphics card and do a little research on compatibility with the software used by the company. Autodesk used to be awfully ‘picky’ about graphics hardware. Try this link for examples.
I’ll add to my reply. I personally hate ‘in your face’ schemes such as #96. I find them jarring and irritating. For my taste bright reds should only be used for warnings or ‘do not use’ notices.
Richard it IS basically a system management controller, the only problem being that the ‘old’ typical requirements were geared towards yachts in harbour/sea options and farm management big P/V systems. Domestic requirements are different and not normally addressed very well — an opportunity for someone!
Most of the stuff the controller does you don’t fiddle with unless you are an inveterate risk-taker e.g. rate of charge, rate of discharge, hysteresis curve for these rates, temperature cut-outs and a whole lot of other things. The manual is around 200 pages and HND/graduate level reading as is the off-line set-up trainer.
Not very helpful, but I’ll give you a preference list:
1: 24
2: 35
3: 30
4: 63
5: 66
I think I may have different preferences depending how the colours are used i.e the colour used for the various window decorations.
You could be right Steve. If anyone is wondering why we have not been subject to a propaganda blitz about the first delivery of the Lightning Turkey, you did not take into account the fact that it can only fly in perfect weather! link. It sort of reminds me of the ‘wrong sort of leaves on the line’ excuse trotted out by the Railways. The linked article did not explain why the Turkey could not have drop tanks – but perhaps the wings cannot carry any load!
Obviously the MOD did not bother to include a ‘fit for purpose’ clause in the UK’s purchase agreement.
Richard, if you have a garage the battery box and controller will be fixed to a convenient wall. The total depth of typical batteries is around 150mm and about 450mm long by 600 deep. The controller is about half that size. The garage is a good place to fit it as it normally is fireproofed and just needs a fire alarm to be fitted. Although a 6Kwh battery has a lot of energy, the controller and very conservative charge rate, max/min settings make them a LOT safer than the average tablet etc. (btw the Tesla battery packs are currently brand new).
[edit] Do NOT fit the controller where you can hear it, the controller fan is very noisy during battery charge/discharge! Again another good reason for using the garage or out-house.
Unfortunately the economics today are only break-even, and I could only justify one for its UPS potential (keep the heating running during power failures).
If anyone ever goes down this route, pay particular attention to the controller. Many are made with yachts or farms in mind, and homes need far more options than are commonly provided – e.g. top up with off-peak mains power, only use the battery during peak cost periods etc. As this is only software it SHOULD be easy to provide, but many companies do not offer such options.
I’m not sure where you get your battery numbers from as battery life depends on a number of factors not least being what range between recharge you need. If you are happy to accept a battery range of 50% of capacity then you are talking of a lifetime battery range of around 350000 miles. I would however be cautious of using such batteries in a home as they can be a real fire hazard if they have had too many deep discharges. This link is quite a good one to explain battery trade-offs.
The battery I have installed in my house cost less than the battery management system that came with it! (I bought it as a dual purpose animal – demand shaving for the solar(clouds cause a steep energy fluctuations) and use as a house UPS if required.)
I set up a GMail account on my PC and view such things there. 90% of the time it is spam, and easiest to delete in Thunderbird.
Richard, the economics of power generation are NOT logical, and we are already in the situation you posit!
Due to the Greenie Windmill tax we are and will be paying far over the odds for each Kw of electricity we buy. Each year you will note that your so-called connection charge rises and these rises are out of line with (say) oil prices. The main reason for this is the unpredictability of most Green energy production(ex nuclear and tidal), and the consequent need to construct standby generators that do nothing for half the time. Figures I have seen suggest that for every Gw of intermittent Green Energy a Gw of standby has to be available. This standby power costs very roughly double the normal generation cost.
The strange free market world of energy trading then results in it being cheaper for an energy company to give away (even pay someone) to use electricity when there is an over-production of wind and solar power.
If the item is low cost then you often do not get asked to pay import duties and taxes. In the past Amazon used Jersey as a point of importation which then avoided duties & taxes. The UK/EU deemed this to be an evasion and closed the loophole.
Ovens, Washing Machines and Tumbler Driers are the major consumers. As you say the rest are immaterial. The Smart Meter just allows choices – for example a text from the Energy company saying “Using your Washing Machine overnight is free – using it now will cost you £1.50”. “Over a year this could reduce your power bill by £100” With an IoT coupled Washing Machine it would be trivial to action this from work.
This is not totally a made-up example as I know such things are being actively considered.
What happens if you just give it a power cycle?
If you have set up a restore point I’d use that.(System Protection->System Protection->Advanced Settings etc) Supposedly this does not always work, but I’ve found that failures are rare and the results are MUCH better than a dated restore.
Richard you raise valid concerns. The Energy Companies are looking at a number of different options (not just tethered cars). Probably the main option under discussion is to offer solar PV owners some form of incentive to install batteries which would be centrally controlled by the companies via their smart meter system. The main use would be for peak shaving on a local basis. Use of car batteries could substantially extend such a system but raise the other issues you talk about.
The Green issues in Germany and Spain that you reference to are one side of the equation and necessitate costly gas powered standby generators that does nothing during high carbon-free generation periods (sunny, windy days) . Battery standby is an additional option to tackle the supply problems caused by dark wind-free nights.
The other additional approach is to address the demand side by using the smart metering system to give users incentives to reduce their demand e.g. take a Kwh off current demand get 2Kwh of power later. A fully automated system would be costly and probably only apply to new builds/rewiring jobs so some form of user messaging system or smart phone/IoT setup is a more likely first approach.
In theory an EV could double up as a house battery. The only thing holding it back are the car manufactures’ concerns about potential impacts on battery warranties. Many utility companies are salivating at the thought as it could reduce their stand-by power requirements for the periods when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind does not blow, but atm it is stalled – probably needs Government action to sort out but don’t hold your breath!
As Richard says a vertical piped system can be used, but for the reasons Richard alludes to the more common method is to dig up any large back-garden and install a huge loop of pipework. link. Unfortunately for the ordinary non-farmer mortal not too many have a spare 40 metre plot of land! Although these pipes are normally buried fairly deeply I’d guess that the cooling effect on the surface vegetation would not be acceptable to keen gardeners. For this reason Air-source heat pumps are more common and easier to maintain. (Tree roots etc could be long term problem areas for ground source systems)
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