lol-lol

A HCI issue. Human Computer Interface with the human having a senior moment. Computer was performing within parameters, human was not.

Major study subject in my OU degree whilst with customs was the very sad case of Piper Alpha. For those too young or just forgotten......

Did work for HMRC, and Department of Transport, then got lured to the dark side working for pwc for about twice the salary, then customs software and then international logistic company in customs compliance. Before all that Merchant Navy Engineering Officer on diesel engines, main propulsion and generators units. Nearly 46 years in a sentence ! Work for a french conglomerate who have many wings ie logistics, battery tech, newspapers, film business.

So many instance. Tianjin port explosion.... We have an office at Tianjin Beirut which our office on the docks perimeter was partially destroyed...... & fire at our battery factory in Northern France...... All due to goods in a nearby warehouse setting fire to an adjacent one which gathered such heat to compound the fires massively ......

I will look more closely next time I am up. Did do some visits to Dover fuel Solution (aka Tokheim) in Dundee, Tayside, might be the largest employer in Dundee since Michelin pulled out. So glad to see they have added EV chargers to their portfolio when they were mainly know for fuel pump dispensers at gas stations and are moving along in to the electric era (DFS- Dover Fuel Solution not the furniture store) Picture of a pretty EV charger which I will look out ........ --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- David Mc Guinness Director of Product Management, Electric Vehicle Charging, DFS# “Electric vehicles can offer benefits to both drivers and the environment. Operating with the same, if not better, processes than their petroleum and diesel counterparts, electric makes your journey better ergonomically, economically and environmentally.”

Super glad to see it. How much solar in November, December, January and February when you are some at nearly 60 degrees latitude plus adding the 23 degrees of the obliquity of the ecliptic ? I know from my panels that in the depths of winter I am getting only 1 or 2% of my rated output ie about tenth of summer power. Mind you solar panels have dropped in price massively and all we now need is for the efficiency of panels to move up from around 20% to around 50% and their usage will be further reinforced. Scotland not helped by picture as below..... https://www.greenmatch.co.uk/blog/2014/07/is-the-uk-sunny-enough-for-solar-panels-to-work

By then scotland will have so much tidal and wind power, and hopefully battery and eventually hydro-storage power it will not need a Chenobyl/ Three Mile Island potential within its borders. Not sure Scotland will every have much solar except in June and July.

From my personal stand point the overnight rate is still fantastically low at 9p per kwH and the Day rate is now so cheap (less than 30p per kWh) that it is not even so bad for a quick pre-condition. Add that to the ability to sign in to the Electoverse discounted public charging which has monthly billing rolled in to ones house electricity and gas, which one is likely to be in credit with all the rate cuts on that supply and whether it is home supply or using the Octopus discounts on many thousands of public chargers in the UK, Octopus just added another supplier to their network, happy days. Octopus France rate do not look as good as UK's rates for night time but better than the UK rates for Day time. It is because France has a the nuclear sites and much less wind I suppose so a flatter cost model by day and night. French nuclear workers get their pay rise and I presume the rivers are full again so those riverside nuclear plant can now work at full bore. Perhaps need some heat pump set ups like we are seeing in Germany, Sweden etc to get some almost free power to add to the French grid. https://www.octopusenergy.fr/offre-electricite-tarifs

I read the first bit earlier but then it came up with a paywall, or what I thought was a paywall but was in fact just a subscription request. Too little information provided and not enough good journalist questions asked or reported. Is he in an expensive car insurance area, is a performance/dual motor car getting the massive insurance hike, has he picked up a speeding ticket which has failed to mention. Could not see that in the article when scanning it. We will see if such scare stories such as fires and high insurance quotes scare the TESLA buying market but I doubt it and the TESLA sales figures are going from strength to strength despite retooling for the new Model 3 and other new models. If it becomes a problem I would expect TESLA to come up with their own insurance policy just like the effectively solved the charging issue by coming up with their own charging network. The move to EVs is unstoppable. It could be slowed a bit by EU/UK Anti dumping measure and internal duty recovery schemes but the technological pace and the rapidly falling price of the technology has EVs on course to be the obvious vehicle of choice for most within the next 6 the years and most ICE cars relegated to historic rallies.

Is going to be a problem. Was talking to my neighbour who has a competition packed M4 and he was saying it is a worrying scenario when you could be at the lights with an MG4 Extreme which is nearly a second quicker to 60 mph. TESLA are doing an software update which is giving a 100 extra horsepower to existing model Y owners so not surprised insurance company are nervous about EVs that accelerate faster than most people can think. Answer will be to have, like we have had with motorbikes which do 60 in less than 4 seconds, or less than 3 seconds or 2.5 seconds or so and then there were many schemes where horsepower could be limited like we have for bikes ie to 12hp for learners or 45 hp for A2 Licences or 100 hp as a voluntary manufacturer's scheme. Lots of chances to insurance based on a horse power and maybe torque limitation. Issue is EVs are just so much quicker accelerating than ICE cars and what insurance company wants to insure a car with drag strip impressive acceleration ? One of the Ozzy states will not let learners under a certain age have L plates on many EVs and particularly Performance and Dual Motor TESLAs as just too quick.

John Lewis is not an insurance company. They are a name which is a front for one or more actual insurance companies. Lloyds bank did this to my son when he moved from an ICE car to a much more powerful hybrid. Ditch going through these paper fronted companies, get on compare the Meerkat and don't deal with such muppets again.

Why would anyone choose OVO over Octopus I am wondering ?? Only reason I can see is Octopus are major supporters of Arsenal FC so could not see a Spurs fan going with Octopus and maybe even a Hammer.

Its fine and improving by the day. Might be that some of the charge companies go bust as TESLA put them out of business by being so much cheaper.

As I said above it was over a who year for me with my 20 hours a day price dropping from 40p per kWh to just under 30p per kWh so actually by one quarter for me but I get 4 hours at 9p per kWh so if I left my fridge freezer on, which seems to require 100Ws to keep it going then I was paying 83p per day for my fridge freezer (20X4p+4x0.75p) ie 83p but now I am paying 64p (20 X 3p+4 x 0.9p) which is just under 64p so 83/64 = nearly 30% less but I actually did before, and do now, effectively only pay about 24 x 0.9p ie less than 22p a day to power the fridge freezer. Actually power the laptop, charge phones, shaver a many other items. The Allpower solar gen has 100w US type C as well as several type A so most things get charged via the batteries which are also grabbing solar power from my panels to help reduce even the night time downing need for lecky. Biggest download is for the EV on the nightime lecky as this dwarfs the power for the solar battery as they are only 4 kwh but the car is 50 kwh. Washing Machine and Tumble Dryer set by timing clocks to use the 9 p per kWh lecky too, unless I am up anyway watch motorsport from Far Asia or Australia.

One does not have to permanently mount either the solar panels or batteries which hold cheap electricity from off peak grid supply or that from solar panels. One just takes the array and the batteries with one when one moves. Example of solar array, a sol tracking one and a battery which has solar as well as grid input and an inverter capable of powering home appliances. Allpowers, Bluetti and Ecoflow are common choice and can be had for under a grand and will save about a £1 a day and they will work for a decade giving near original capacity. They can be daisy chained to supply many GWh of power, enough to supply the house's major appliance through the day and then be recharged again at night on the cheap lecky. Some people carry them in the car as emergency charge ie Bjorn Nyland in his EV drive the vehicle until it dies tests.

Uk just had a second Scandinavian 1.4 GW interconnector plumbed in a few days ago, plus more people getting solar and getting home battery storage plus charging their car on cheap overnight lecky like I do. If electricity did go up I would install several kws of solar panels, their price is falling like a stone same as home storage batteries. Electricity is a ubiquitous fuel and if one source becomes expensive then just find another unlike diesel which comes from people who chops hands and heads off or start wars and both and control the price to fund such. Russia has just decided to double it arms budget, just as the US senate decided to stop further finance to Ukraine. Where does Russia gets its money. I gather Saudi has been refining Russian heavy fuel which diesel is fracted from. Smart meter measures usage. Octopus just lowered my day time per unit price massively. Oil is up nearly a quarter since June and the pound has lost about 5% of its value against the US dollar. Noticed the change in pump prices over the last couple of months ? More to come !

MHEV, Mild Hybrid? I have one ie my Arkana, it is not great round town on mpg, maybe 40-45 mpg. The non-plug in hybrids seem to be good like the ETECH series with Renault. 60 to 80 mpg for a these models whether segment B, C or D segment.

Apologies. Mine was coming off an annual tariff so the step down over a year rather than the 3 month step. I am quite happy with 29.9 p per KWh, combined with the 9 p per kWh for 4 hours I suppose that gets me to your 27 p per kWh if I had linear use around the clock but when one can use over half electricity in the 4 hours it give me an average cost of less than 20 p per kWh on the old and new tariffs. Greg Jackson of Octopus is the man. They are still making quite a loss per year but still getting massive investment.

Octopus users, I would have thought. My daytime rate has gone down from 40p per kwh to 30 p per kwh so by a quarter. Night time did tick up from 7.5 to 9 p per kwh but still ridiculously cheap.

Today, the 1st of October, price of electricity to home owners has dropped by some 20% meanwhile the pound against the USD, what oil is bought and sold at has fallen by 3.3% making imported diesel erven more expensive which will further push up the price of diesel at the pumps. There are more and more renewables coming on stream plus more international interconnector to countries with excess electricity much of the time. Oil prices are controlled largely by the Saudis and to some degree the Russian where as electricity is a commodity traded by the minutes and sometimes in such excess it can be given away for free and increasingly so. So to go a vehicle powered by a fuel price controlled by despots or one which is increasingly falling towards zero could and should be part of your thought process I suggest. Youtuber Davetakesiton I think might be a Youtuber based out of Lancashire and like most UK places there are dozens of new chargers popping up every week and huge amounts on the trunk road network and with TESLA opening up its network to non-TESLA it is going to be the case that access to chargers that cost similar to home charging prices are going to be the norm at those hubs. Latest vid below. I do not have an idea what the market for 3 year old EV cars which have a one and a half tonne towing capacity. Model Y towing capability is 1600 kgs, not the best selling car in the world for nothing, much as ford was in its heyday. Mustang-e towing weights were poor and have only just be upped. https://octopusev.com/ev-hub/best-electric-cars-for-towing

A have loosely followed the last few pages of speed limit stuff, not sure how we got there from the truth about EV's but hey ho. I did hear some numb nuts circulating that the 20 mph had to be brought in because heavier EVs could not stop as quickly. Anybody want to know braking distance for most mainstream EVs and compare them to an ICE I suggest the ZEPREF website.... https://zeperfs.com/en/perfs.php?Action=Duel A few points I would make of the 20 mile limit is, which I support as an ex Department of Transport Officer at Exeter SWRO scarred by reading numerous fatal accident report and recognising cars much braking performance, tyres etc. Car increasingly will have black boxes that will record the speed of vehicles just before the accident. Autonomous driving will only operate at the maximum speed for the area. In Wales I can see big queues behind such cars as I experience just about everyone driving at 22,23,24 or 25 or so in these areas. I wonder if there might finally be applying a minimum standards of frontal safety of cars in relation to safety which would perhaps majority change the frontal profile of Chelsea tractors ? The death of the two children killed at the Wimbeldon school by collision with a Range Rover. Might they have survived if the car had been a car such as a TESLA with their Higher Vulnerable Road User score https://www.euroncap.com/en/results/tesla/model+y/46618 compared to Range Rover and RR Sport variants. RR https://www.euroncap.com/en/results/land+rover/range+rover/47130 and RR sport - https://www.euroncap.com/en/results/land+rover/range+rover/47131 UK has done well to reduce road deaths but there is still much to do and advanced in car safety systems should bring the road death numbers down from the hundred to dozens and then singles and the zero eventually.

I drive in Wales a lot for personal and professional driving and the 20 mph limit areas I still see most drivers travelling up to an indicated 25 mph. When it was 30 mph many drivers were up anything up to an indicated 35 mph. I think Welsh police regions tend to use the lowest setting ie 10% plus 2 mph as shown below. So a speed limit of 20 mph will have cameras set to a true 24 mph and probably translates to an indicated 25 mph as most cars over read slightly. Not encouraging drivers to push the limits but my experience of driving in 20 mph zones, before the introduction of a standard 20 mph limit, which local authorities can vary at will, is safer and more sensible driving at indicated 25 mph or less rather than 35 mph in the case of nominal sign posted 30 mph zones. Having worked as a Department of Accident accident investigator for Trunk road accidents I have no problem with this recent adjustment to lower speed limit is residential, school etc zones. https://www.confused.com/car-insurance/guides/speed-camera-tolerances#:~:text=UK fixed and mobile speed camera tolerances,-We contacted 45&text=Most police forces have a,go up to 79 mph. Here’s what the 39 forces responded with: Police force Speed camera tolerance Avon & Somerset Police 10% + 2 mph Cheshire Constabulary 10% + 2 mph City of London Police 10% + 2 mph Cumbria Constabulary 10% + 2 mph Derbyshire Constabulary 10% + 2 mph Dorset Police 10% + 2 mph Essex Police 10% + 2 mph Gloucestershire Constabulary 10% + 2 mph Gwent Police 10% + 2 mph Humberside Police 10% + 2 mph Kent Police 10% + 2 mph Lancashire Constabulary 10% + 3 mph Leicestershire Police 10% + 2 mph Lincolnshire Police 10% + 2 mph Metropolitan Police Service 10% + 2 mph Norfolk Constabulary 10% + 2 mph Northamptonshire Police 10% + 2 mph North Wales Police 10% + 2 mph Police Scotland 10% + 2 mph Police Service Northern Ireland (PSNI) 10% + 4 mph South Wales Police 10% + 2 mph South Yorkshire Police 10% + 2 mph Suffolk Constabulary 10% + 2 mph Sussex Police 10% + 2 mph Thames Valley Police 10% + 2 mph West Mercia Police 10% + 2 mph

And here in Worcester they do, to at least a small extent. At Warndon Community centre, which is in a generally poorer bit of Worcester, two 7 kw on Shap Drive at the Commune-ity centre but the up record looks horrendous, often ICE'd spaces. Says Free to use but I have also seen 28p per kWH quoted and one needs a RFID card to use. 1/10 score I reckon if being generous. Well over 100 other public chargers in Worcester and close by. Should be a place TESLA put in 6 chargers at least. Coffee shop open sometimes plus other facilities. Council missed a trick, again.

Use to stay those that can't teach but I think it should be some of those who cannot go into local and national government.

You would have thought getting a heat pump installation would be the right action to keep the pools open. One cleverly combined a local data centre, with all their waste heat to help keep the swimming pool open. Rare joined up thinking.