World made 0.000001°C cooler, but house made 600°C hotter
Remember The Precautionary Principle: something about “no House-B”?
An Orange Flash and then Melanie’s House Burnt Down
Melanie Sandford was sitting in bed on a rainy Sunday morning listening to a podcast about enlightenment when she heard a “huge bang”.
“A nanosecond later, there was an orange flash that ripped down past the bedroom door,” Ms Sandford said.
All signs point to the lithium ion battery of Ms Sandford’s beloved eZee Sprint e-bike as the culprit.
The firefighters arrived promptly – “I’m told it was four minutes but it felt like three hours” – but it was too late to save her home.
Another hidden battery cost?
GlowWorm Bicycles said eZee has recalled some faulty batteries, but lists these Handy safety tips for all e-bike batteries: Don’t charge them unsupervised, don’t overcharge, undercharge, charge near flammable things or charge overnight, and have a fire safety plan.
At Glowworm Bicycles we recommend the following precautions when charging your e-bike batteries:
– Always charge in an area where the battery can be supervised.
– Never charge your battery for longer than required. As a general rule, we suggest charging your batteries to up to 80% of their capacity. This will also support the longevity of your battery. We also recommend not running your battery down to empty prior to charging.
– The average lifespan of a lithium ion battery is 3-5 years, depending on usage and how well the battery is cared for. Most batteries will come with a 2 year warranty. We recommend replacing your battery if you begin to have issues with it after 5 years.
– If a battery is left uncharged for an extended period of time it may go flat and cannot be repaired. For good battery health, charge regularly.
– In case of an emergency we recommend you have a fire safety plan in place.
UPDATE: For the record, today a Corvette exploded into flames at a fuel station. Cause unknown.
h/t Dave B and Peter C
Maybe a nice regular bike and eat Wheaties(R).
https://www.thedailymeal.com/you-better-eat-your-wheaties
Commercials featuring Wheaties and athletes.
Where was Ms Sandford’s bike that the flash went past her bedroom door?
150
Nasty people, those flashers.
80
Not if you’re Bill the flasher. He can get up to full charge in just eight to ten minutes apparently – depending on the size of your battery. A very flash performance that.
210
Now there is the best advice yet. Avoid the thing that causes the problem and not have to worry about it. What athlete ever died or even had a house burned down from eating Wheaties(R)?
The other option would be to provide more competent engineering and manufacturing in the first place.
91
“…provide more competent engineering and manufacturing in the first place.”
In the rush to save the planet there are subsidizes to be harvested. There seems to be no penalties for getting the science wrong (See: Ehrlich, Wadhams, Gore, …), or wasting tax payer’s money. OZ has a long list of the latter, so no need to name them.
170
Did we have this problem with NiCds?
60
Look on the bright side.
She can now renew her house!
40
I larfed at:
– Always charge in an area where the battery can be supervised.
Read as, “The battery will take about 6 to 8 hours to charge. Please remain by the battery, and supervise it as it charges. Bringing your Bike into the lounge room, beside the TV, may be convenient, but consider the hazard of explosion and fire if doing so. Don’t be disrespectful when supervising, just talk normally to it.”
– Never charge your battery for longer than required. As a general rule, we suggest charging your batteries to up to 80% of their capacity. This will also support the longevity of your battery. We also recommend not running your battery down to empty prior to charging.
Read as, “The battery is x MinuteWattHours, which should propel your bike for Y Metres. However, in the interest of safety, we recommend you charge your battery to 80% and ride it for 80% of that. NO, we do not think the reduction in advertised distance is false advertising.”
– The average lifespan of a lithium ion battery is 3-5 years, depending on usage and how well the battery is cared for. Most batteries will come with a 2 year warranty. We recommend replacing your battery if you begin to have issues with it after 5 years.
Read as, “Some batteries last for longer than 5 years, and some last for less. We think our batteries will last for 2. If yours lasts for less it’s not our fault. You are both unlucky and technologically incompetent.”
– If a battery is left uncharged for an extended period of time it may go flat and cannot be repaired. For good battery health, charge regularly.
Read as, “Your battery life may be reduced if you leave it uncharged for an extended period of time. No, we do not actually know how long “extended period” is. If we knew, and it was quite long, we would tell you, if not, we wouldn’t tell you. It’s not that this is dishonest, it’s just that the marketing department wants to sell batteries.”
912
No need to add much Cynic has said it all
130
My neighbours will be wondering what I’m laughing at so loudly.
For the wealthier inner city elites, they can hire a baby sitter to supervise the battery charging for 8hrs.
220
“It may go flat and can not be repaired”.
Obviously the easiest way to make it safe – or would it still burn?
50
It sounds like Tesla batteries. No need for a funeral plan if you’re a Tesla owner. It will take care of your incineration for you, right when you’re not ready for it.
Now it’s ezee bikes too!
There’s a market opening for a shrewd builder:
– take out all the old/original fireplaces
– put in (making a space if needed) an all new, fire-proof bike charging station complete with mountings etc for your bike and its charger. Fire in the charging space guaranteed not to spread!
– do a deal with insurance companies for better premiums for those with fire-proof charging-places
There’s a potential market, too, for fireproof garages for all EV owners. Tesla Garages …
Should you be able to save for them on a “Tesla Owners’ Plan”?. Make an ezee bike savings plan … too.
But do watch out for developers with an expressed interest in urban renewal … 🙂
(How will you be able to tell them? Easy: a free ezee bike with each sign up!)
A few more fires and the insurance companies may start to wake up to Li-ion batteries …
80
All those old slow combustion stoves/fireboxes…..perfect.
More like high fast combustion, but cast iron should cope…..
20
All that’s needed now is an underground car park full of EVa to go whizz,bang, very bright flash!
20
ooh yes! It is a free benefit of owning a Tesla, an overland “Viking Funeral” free of charge! 🙂
40
And soon they will have to add: ” if you actually hang around to watch a potentially explosive battery charging, you should use a scatter shield” .
70
Surely supervising the charging could be hazardous, unless from behind a blastproof screen.
60
This whole comment may be irrelevant, given the way the world works but I want to try to make a point.
If someone else asked this question I missed it among all the comments. So I’m going to do it.
The instruction to charge in a place where the battery can be supervised is ambiguous. What exactly does one do when supervising a charging battery? This has been tossed around lightly to make fun of the manufacturer. But let’s be serious a moment. Do you ask it for periodic status reports? Do you get regular reports automatically? Do you measure its temperature at regular intervals (direct observation)? If some activity during charging is not being done correctly, do you give instructions to correct the deficiency? I’ll bet not.
Those are all things I associate with supervision. And they do not mean a tinker’s diddlie-do when applied to a charging battery.
I’m an unusual guy in that from childhood until now curiosity about how things work has consumed my interest. At age 6 I was fooling with the water shutoff valve on the building where we lived (I should have gotten into trouble). I was the odd kid who would rather read about electricity than play baseball. I repaired old radios. And most of you can run circles around me about batteries (and a lot of other things). I had to learn by going after information and then finding that I didn’t understand part of it and had to dig for that knowledge too. But I learned, thanks to curiosity
You and I have a fighting chance to avoid trouble. The hapless woman whose house is now ashes had no chance. The red flag was there but how does John Q. public recognize it? The inner workings of things electric is a big black box to most people and they can’t see inside it. How do people have any chance to find the red flag and do simple see and avoid trouble?
If anything, our governments have the responsibility to act to protect one citizen from the carelessness or ignorance of another. But instead they try to control us. They want political correctness instead of safety.
Why do we tolerate this?
90
Let’s cut them some slack. Battery vehicles are an okay idea and one can live with the odd mishap. I particularly like forklifts, but that’s just me.
There’s the slack cut.
Now, what about the idea of filling cities (after
riflingliberating Bolivia and Congo for ingredients) with electric vehicles, most parked where they can on streets and in avenues and up alley ways and down roads and along highways.Then, for the many who do have power points, what about six o’clock plug-in for an ever more Bambi-friendly and flimsy grid?
Our Green Betters are bound to have an easy answer for all that. It’s what makes them our betters, I suppose. We scratch our heads, their lips are flapping confidently about smart cities and smart solutions and smart everything else. They’re smart, okay?
390
A smart greenie is an oxymoron
473
Whereas a normal greenie is simply – A MORON.
482
Fork lifts use lead/acid. Fork lifts need ballast. Lead/acid is good ballast, saves on cast iron. For cars and scooters ballast is a burden.
Back to the main topic. We don’t need too many stories like this one to ban lithium.
321
My only neighbour still running a full household on solar uses lead/acid.
140
Many modern fork lifts use LiIon batteries ..for their longer service life ,faster charging, less maintenance, and ease of handling..
Most battery fires are the result of human error .
28
Unless it’s an insurance job. Then the Lithium-ion battery comes into its own.
Where I come from that’s called an “offset” – as in Alpine Offset. No names; no pack-drill.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offset_Alpine_fire
70
Lithium Ion batteries are so unfit for purpose on so many fronts but the fire risk aspect should have them banned for the large capacity, home/office/habitable space recharging or any other place where their fire risk is unacceptable. They are starting to look like aluminium panels of mult story buildings.
230
Lithium ion batteries have serious heat buildup if charged too fast. Toyota Prius continues to stick with the Ni metal hydride for most models. All the information I can find suggests they still do not trust Li-ion because of the heat problem that’s been known for a long time.
I’m not sure what other drawback there may be to using Li ion. If not abused they offer longer life than Ni metal hydride. They power cell phones by the millions and I’ve replaced phones but never a Li ion battery. But I can feel the temperature rise if it’s run down and then charged while covered by something; as in, used it while in bed and it was charging then let go of it leaving it covered with me in bed. I’ll never do that trick again.
70
Hi Roy,
It may be that physical size of LiPos is the critical issue with heat removal.
With small scale batteries there is plenty of battery surface area to enable operational heat loss.
With larger batteries there’s a relatively smaller surface area per unit mass with the problem of greater heat retention and trouble.
Battery skin rupture and exposure of contents to atmospheric moisture is a real fizzer.
Big is bad.
Small O.K..
60
I have a good article (Notalotofpeopleknowthat 19 June 2018) that discusses the effects of the addition of certain chemicals to Lithium batteries and their impact of battery safety. Apparently the addition of nickel in the cathode improves energy density but decreases battery stability. There is an interesting triangle diagram that compares discharge capacity versus cost and stability, with indications that some battery makers are operating close to the limits of safety to obtain higher performance. Cobalt, while being scarce and expensive, improves battery stability. There is a trade off between cost and safety. While neither Panasonic nor Tesla will discuss their actual 2170 battery makeup, I believe the best hints can be obtained from the Jeff Dahn presentation (a YouTube TED talk) of how certain chemicals provide “better” battery performance. But it seems that this performance comes at a price.
70
Theres batteries and batteries though Roy , and I am pretty sure comparing phone batteries with whats going on in an EV is valid.
The basic premise of the EV battery being a nice packaging of thousands of individually manufactured 18650/2170/whatever cells seems like a recipe of inevitable production flaws, incidents and fires. You need to get thousands of cells individually fault free, you need to get thousands of cell connections individually fault free, and you need to operate the resulting system within safe parameters and protect it from mechanical intrusion/breakage within the expected operating use of a car. All while the product is exposed to the general public (global mediam IQ 82)
If you are mass producing EVs by the 10’s or 100’s of thousands then it seems unsurprising that some cars will self immolate or be easily bumped that way. Things like production spread and manufacturing error rates, poor management and disgruntled employees didnt dissapear overnight because somebody thought of building EVs,
In a lower density environment and without the self sustaining nature of a Lithium battery fire the impact wouldnt be so high. I guess we will see as the population increases. Of course the faithful will say petrol cars burn too, which of course they can, but just you know observing the real world not many do. Most real world accidents for the fleet that is still 99% of road vehicles do not result in fires. They certainly dont spontaneously ignite in the garage or the Woolies car park.
I see a niche for EVs , especially for the poor sods who live in cities, however I will happily be a late adopter of this technology assuming it becomes a sensible buying choice sometime in the future.
60
“…..with whats going on in an EV is valid.” meant to say not valid
20
I believe Aust Standards wanted to introduce safety standards for household battery storage. But the many suppliers strongly objected to s suitable standard, so at this stage I believe no standard exists. This might change with the first house that goes up due to an external battery system fault.
40
I took part in an Australian Standard review recently having being nominated by my professional body and can advise that there was nitpicking and people with agenda’s etc. Not that it was not reasonable input and opinion for a fairly wide ranging standard but just to say that the process is, well, ‘democracy in action’. OK eventually but sometimes tedious to have to go through.
I can just imagine trying to draft a technical standard for such batteries with the EV, Solar industry let alone ‘renewables experts’ on the committee. Pushing the capacity boundaries up and risk metrics and recharge times down would be the driving agenda.
Choosing the comittee members would be where the outcome is largely determined. Would it even be possible to get a majority of rational, engineering and risk management types.
My guess is that the first iteration would result in a ‘Pink Batts’ outcome which would only be fixed after some massive factory fire killed 100 people or the PM’s EV suddenly burst into flames on its way to Yarralumla.
60
I wrote a brief story on some of the impacts of going all electric not long ago: https://australianimage.com.au/electric-vehicles-back-to-the-1800s/. I left out quite a number of potential issues such as self-immolating cars because while it wasn’t unknown, it wasn’t entirely common just yet.
But what about when electric cars substantially replace conventional cars? Imagine one going off at peak hour on one of our major freeways where everything is in grid lock. It won’t be just one car going up in flames, the heat will be so severe that it’ll likely start a chain reaction.
The other thing is that from US experience, it’s almost impossible to put out one of these fires and often all that firefighters can do is let the car burn and try to contain the fire. Try doing that in a peak hour traffic jam.
290
A d if there were two RVs in a single prang?
Cheers
Dave B
100
Sorry about the fat fingers…
Trying again:
And if there were two EVs in a single prang?
…
That looks better.
Cheers
Dave B
91
I forgot that I did add an addendum referencing battery fires and have now included a video of one from 2017. It’s a scary thought should that happen on a typical freeway at peak hour. The way the fire comes out the side of the Tesla is like a massive flame thrower. One wonders how people would escape and how far the fire could spread.
110
It seeme to me that just as an exploding boiler on a steam train could cause horrific damage, weve gone back to that era of “dont get it wrong”.
In terms of energy density, it seems to have a disproportionate risk to the benefit.
It would be interesting to get an insurance underwriters thoughts on it ( as opposed to an undertakers view , if you own a certain EV… )
30
“Our Green Betters are bound to have an easy answer for all that. It’s what makes them our betters, I suppose. We scratch our heads, their lips are flapping confidently about smart cities and smart solutions and smart everything else. They’re smart, okay?”
Time for a rerun of “The Good Soldier Švejk” adapted to the world of greenery
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good_Soldier_%C5%A0vejk
60
Open question – do forklifts run on lithium batteries these days?
00
They used to run on propane?
00
Yes, many do, whilst some use diesel, lpg, cng, or even petrol,.
10
Jo,
Your best (sub-) heading ever!:
World made 0.000001°C cooler, but house made 600°C hotter
Almost nothing works when trying to convince virtue-seeking nongs that they have got it all wrong. After all, when belief in CAGW (and all its associated idiocies) has been shoe-horned into your DNA
how can mere facts or logic overturn something one’s whole life is based upon? But – satire and ridicule might just do it. Nobody can tolerate ridicule for long without reacting. It’s not an original idea,
but perhaps we should spend more time sending up these dupes who are so easily satirised. Like shooting fish in a barrel, really.
190
I beg to differ.
Jo is exaggerating to the extreme.
It is nowhere near 0.000001.
160
a yocto-degree, or less
52
A yobbo degree.
Only obtainable from James Cook University (JCU) and its Institute of Marine Propaganda.
210
My wife has a standard measure of the “Eno” whenever she feels some number has gotten beyond comprehension. Impressively the Eno works in both directions, so an Eno_metre may be a distance to an object beyond Alpha Centauri or the width of a hair on a fly’s leg. Context is everything when using the Eno.
30
“when belief in CAGW (and all its associated idiocies) has been shoe-horned into your DNA
how can mere facts or logic overturn something one’s whole life is based upon?” THIS WHOLE THING IS COMING FROM UN AGENDA 2030: see https://balance10.blogspot.com/2019/04/un-agenda-2030-ettc.html
30
If Ms Sandford had been monitoring the re-charge process and had an Li-Extinguisher of sufficient size in her hand ready to operate, I suspect she would have died before she could have re-acted!
160
Do you think that watching your Li battery charge might replace “watching paint dry” as the new definition of boring?
Cheers
Dave B
190
Watching grass grow is definitely the more boring. Paint dries too fast.
90
Watching apples grow is even better (remembering Stan Rodgers.)
30
these guys have boring nailed
https://www.dullmensclub.com/airport-luggage-carousel-table-of-contents/
30
Glowworm Bicycles sell eZee batteries rated at 11Ah upwards unfortunately they don’t specify the voltage so the energy stored is un-quantified.
People actually sit on a bicycle saddle a few CM above an energy source capable of burning their you know what’s to a crisp.
Not for this Bunny!
221
Most Ebike batteries are 36 or 48 volts.
So about 500Wh of energy stored when fully charged ..about the same as your typical car starter battery.
You are aware that there are tens of millions of Ebikes in use around the world with far less fires than typical Ice cars .
Its a fair bet that we have not had the full story of Melanie Sanfords battery fire !
49
Chad,
“… there are tens of millions of Ebikes in use around the world with far less fires than typical Ice cars …”
I would query your numbers — you have a reference for Ebike fires vs ICE vehicle fires? If so is that for the same number of miles traveled, or the same number of refuels/recharges for each vehicle?
In regard to fires the word ‘YET’ appears to be missing. e.g. “The are ‘×’ number of Ebikes in use around the world, and the total number of fires caused by these Ebikes is YET to be known.”
That is to say I doubt you have any verified figures for you assertion, and are just making it up to suit your prejudice.
101
I doubt anyone has accurate numbers for ebike use or fires, but suffice to say that the Ebike is the primary source of transport in Chinese cities, so i may suspect my numbers of Ebikes in use is on the low side.f anything.
However, the number of car fires is much better known (if not widely reported ..because it is so common ?) . For example just the USA has over 170,000 REPORTED highway car fires each year…dramatically down from the 400,000+ fires of the 1980s.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/377006/nmber-of-us-highway-vehicle-fires/
31
A little more data…
https://makewealthhistory.org/2018/11/26/chinas-ebike-revolution/
But yes , you are correct, …no hard data on the number of fires…but if it were an issue, im sure some news would have been reported.
Especially as most of these millions of ebikes are assembled by dodgy small chinese back street factories using the cheapest components available , with little regard to safety standards or cell makers recomendations. !
11
Wonder if all those batteries are environmentally disposed of?
30
“I doubt anyone has accurate numbers for ebike use or fires” exactly so why make the comparative assertion?
40
Why Not ?
I dont need to refer to some jurno’s assessment of relative numbers , when the situation is simply obvious !
If there were a similar ratio of ebike battery fires to car fires, in a user base of 250 million, ..it would have been reported !
Some of you guys need to step back from the keyboard and look at where you are going with this.
Why the hate on batteries, lithium or any other ?
How many house fires have there been due to cheap heaters, cigarettes in bedrooms, candles in lounges, electrical faults, etc etc ??
This isnt the first house fire involving a battery , and it wont be the last, ..but the reporting and response is certainly well off the scale !
23
This sounds correct Chad. I have a 36 volt eBike and a charger that’s rated at 42 Volts, 2 Amps max. Takes about 90 mins to top up the battery after a 30-40 km ride.
31
Can I sell anyone a slightly used ‘London Bridge’.
80
I have just the right buyer for you.
His name is Peter Fitzroy. He will contact you through these pages.
102
But only if he can get a subsidy from the government.
92
I used to have a two-stroke auxiliary power unit for a normal Bicycle, about 70kpg, range 60km.
Tire wear about 2100km until replacement required.
I replaced the tire and put that bicycle motor in auction, got 75% of purchase price back, lol.
70
Each Lithium cell should have its own individual fuse.
So if a cell goes short circuit all the charge current does not go through it.
That is how DIY powerwalls are usually built.
20
It is not possible to protect each cell from an internal failure. There is no mention of the type of cell. LiPoly cells have very high power density and an internal fault can cause a fire. LiFePO4 cells usually just swell when they have an internal fault.
Individual 2070 lithium cells I have purchased have protection circuitry in the negative end cap that prevents overcharging and over discharging. The circuitry cannot withstand the heat of soldering so these cells must have spring contacts. The protection circuit prevents the most common failure modes but will not protect against an internal cell fault.
All the chargers I have seen have some form of individual cell monitoring and shut down the charger if any cell is too high or too low. or even out of balance by a few parts of a volt compared with the other cells.
I have had two battery fires. One due to just the wire insulation burning when I accidentally shorted the battery leads. The other was trying to recover a cell that was out of balance and I overcharged the cell using bench power supply. That caused the entire battery to catch on fire. Both these were small LiPoly batteries. I have seen metal connectors vaporised when accidentally shorting a 100Ah LiFePO4 cell. I have seen two LiFePO4 cells that have swollen as a result of internal fault and rapid discharge; neither caused fires.
As the power density of batteries increase they become a greater fire risk. They need to be handled and stored with care just like you should treat flammable liquids.
140
I was thinking of Tesla powerwalls which use 18650 cells each individually fused.
DIY powerwalls using recycled laptop battery generally also use a fuse wire soldered to each cell.
https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=88039
AFAIK a standard Ebike battery does not include fuses on each cell.
40
Think you are right George.
20
Fusing individual cells will not prevent a fire from an internal cell fault. All the stored energy gets dissipated in the cell. If the chemistry is prone to thermal runaway, like a LiPoly cell, then it is likely to result in a fire. No fuse on the cell can prevent that condition. An internal fault can be caused by mechanical damage, overcharging or just internal bridging. All will result in a fire.
This is mechanical damage:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRutyaxmdrs
This iOS overcharging:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbnjEt8msjI
30
Phone batteries have a builtin fuse and a temp chip feedback for the battery management chip in the phone. My fone bat went awol after I left it in the sun, it was already off colour, then it died. no bang or smoke. Trouble is if they short with very small internal resistance then you get infinite currents flowing..oops! bang time. I suspect thats what the fires are mainly due to.
50
The Panasonic 2170 batteries used in Teslas have a fusible link built in to each battery. So if one cell shorts, it doesn’t impact the battery bank as a whole.
10
Any external protection cannot protect against an internal cell fault. Teslas are proof of that:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzfxZMXRG38
20
Thats exactly it, the fuse is for external short.
20
Not necessarily…it also protects the pack if a cell shorts internally resulting in a dead short for the rest of the parallel cells in that module. Without that fuse, there would be up to 1000 amps shorting through that single failed cell.
That would be a “plasma” event .!
NOTE.. There are up to 96 cells in parallel in a Tesla pack, each capable of at least 10 amps discharge and the fuse links on each cell wont blow until 15 + amps from individual cell discharge.
20
This is the point I was trying to make Chad. Thanks for the additional detail.
20
Interesting that you quote 10 amps discharge Chad. Was thinking about max charging, and presume this would a similar 10 amps?
If yes, for a Tesla car, that’s around 176 kWh max charge rate over one hour, so I can’t see how even a 350 kWh charger could fully charge a car in less than 30 mins. Unless my maths are wrong…
20
I dont think any of the EV makers claim you can fully charge a pack in 30 mins,..most say something like “ charge to 80%”. And that is usually from a 15-20% minimum charge level…
So you are unlikely to actually recharge more than 65-70% of the full pack capacity.
Lithium charging protocols generally require a progressive reduction of the charge current for the last 10-20% of maximum cell capacity to ensure cells do not overheat. That last 10% can take as long as the first 90% of the charge cycle.
10
So parking your shiny new EV under the house isnt such a great idea?
150
I bouhgt some DIY bits to mod an existing mountain bike and turn it into a e-bike. I got sick of being bled dry by parking costs. Now with a 10 AH battery and a 750W 36V motor, you can have some fun.
Also means you can park a distance from work, and cover ground at an un-natural speed and efficiency….
Also bought a specific li-ion battery charger. I wonder if the woman involved had a dodgy charger?
50
So you have a 360Wh battery on a 750W motor giving 28 minutes at full power ?
I guess you do a fair amount of pedal assist though.
20
Pretty much, although the bike leg of my commute is currently about 15 mins, so I should be right.
40
My eBike range is quoted at 65 kms, but my experience is that this is conservative, as I’ve ridden over 40 kms consistently and the battery charge indicator has only gone down to 80% charge. Makes riding a lot easier, especially up hills and against headwinds.
20
Well, if the Big Battery in SA ever goes bang……it will be the stuff (up) of legend….
120
Australia will be accused of trialling nuclear bombs.
60
OS
I gathered that it already was “the stuff of legends”
70
It was meant to also be a tourist attraction, that would bring many tourist dollars to the region as the excited plebs flocked to Jamestown to gape and wonder at, well, a big shed with a fence around it…
30
The battery fire at the Engie Electrabel plant in Drogenbos in Brussells, Belgium on Saturday, November 11 2017 during commissioning, was Belgium’s contribution to grid stabilization with big batteries.
Belgian police advised citizens to try “not breathing the smoke” which was reputed to be toxic.
I’m waiting for SA’s big battery to let all its smoke out anytime. It was made by Elon Musk so it’s like his Teslas: a good candidate for a random blaze.
40
gosh, a bike allegedly causes a fire.
In other news
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/sports-car-gutted-in-sydney-petrol-station-fire-20190428-p51hv9.html
616
Good find Roy.
51
You made that comment on the last thread PF.
Please explain your point! A fire can occur at a petrol station, but it did not burn down the owners house. Jo is saying something about the danger of charging large lithium batteries in the home.
A distraction. Oh look, there is a squirrel over there! (I thought you were smarter than that.)
181
No.
Cindy has only a limited capacity to copy and regurgitate.
But still, perhaps smarter than a squirrel.
52
We charge all sorts of lithium devices at home, these of course are mostly phones, pads, laptops, and various accessories that have bluetooth connectivity like smart watches, wireless headphones, etc. We also have a lot of lithium devices for home use like vacuum cleaners, cordless drills etc. Tradies also have a wide range of lithium power packs for their tools. Occasionally, these devices will burst into flame, but are no longer news.
Interestingly the most common cause of household fire is extension cords, so that might be a factor in this news story.
Riffing off the dangers of petrol here in a recent news story about a car busting into flames after an acciedent
While I understand that Li containing units can burst into flame, if Tesla and Apple are to be believed, it has never happened when using original factory supplied kit.
617
Ask Boeing
120
Flame?
More like Fizzzzz.
Unstoppable Fizzz.
73
Peter,
Your link does not back this up at all?
It was a ONE off fire in NZ you linked to?
Extension leads don’t even rate in the top 10 in Australia?
Why are you lying again?
91
Sorry Dave
https://www.esfi.org/resource/home-electrical-fires-184
Meanwhile Wikipedia reports ‘During 2010-2018, there were approximately 52,000 gasoline car fires, for each 1 electric car fire”
319
52,000 to 1? What is the proportion of ICE cars to EV cars on the road?
133
Annie, Annie Annie. He’s not interested in truth. he can’t do mathematics.
He’s a greenie.
I’ll give you 52,000 to 1 that the “orange flash” that he’s committed to is this “orange flash”:
https://www.crikey.com.au/2019/04/18/getup-doorknocking-dickson/
He’s a GetUp! troll.
83
🙂
22
Sam,
He works through the Port Moresby branch of George’s organisation: “Gettupim”.
KK
82
Last i heard, Australia had approx 10 mill cars registered, of which approx 6000 were full battery EVs, (many more battery hybrids though )
So , approx 1500 ice’s for every one BEV in Australia
20
Misdirection and slithering again, hey Fitz.
For most of that period there were basically no electric cars anyway.
There are STILL basically no electric cars.
Certainly in Australia in 2017 there were ZERO PERCENT electric cars on the road(rounded to 1 decimal place)
Delude yourself by all means, but stop trying to con us!
164
I would like to see some more hard statistics before judging the fire risk.
“Lithium ion battery systems are anticipated to be somewhat comparable to or perhaps slightly less than those for gasoline or diesel vehicular fuels.”
There’s a car fire in the U.S. about every 1-3 minutes, which totals about 174,000 vehicle fires a year. With there being so many fewer EVs on the roads, it looks like there’s virtually no fires in comparison.
From a CNN Money article:
“Tesla claims that gasoline powered cars are about 11 times more likely to catch fire than a Tesla. It says the best comparison is fires per 1 billion miles driven. It says the 300,000 Teslas on the road have been driven a total of 7.5 billion miles, and about 40 fires have been reported. That works out to five fires for every billion miles traveled, compared to a rate of 55 fires per billion miles traveled in gasoline cars.”
It’s still very early, so in time we’ll get better data around the fire risk, but it’s been grossly overstated in the media up to now and blown out of proportion.
https://undecidedmf.com/episodes/2019/1/1/electric-cars-myths-vs-facts
50
Here’s another few quotes to go with that one:
“I never had sex with that woman”.
“Well he would, wouldn’t he?”
“Snow will be a thing of the past”.
“Arctic summers will be ice-free by 2013”.
“We have ‘less than 100 months to act’ to save the planet”.
“There’s just five years to avoid disastrous global warming
“Our results show that temperature records of at least 17 years in length are required for identifying human effects on global-mean tropospheric temperature” Oops!
123
Sorry I don’t yet see the fire risk of EVs being a deal breaker for them.
The comparative cost of an EV plus battery on the other hand I am not at all sure about ….
But who really knows the technological future ?
30
George4 says:
Indeed George. EVs’ve been around for yonks and gone nowhere:
“Rechargeable batteries that provided a viable means for storing electricity on board a vehicle did not come into being until 1859, with the invention of the lead–acid battery by French physicist Gaston Planté. Camille Alphonse Faure, another French scientist, significantly improved the design of the battery in 1881; his improvements greatly increased the capacity of such batteries and led directly to their manufacture on an industrial scale.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_electric_vehicle
They were superseded by ICEVs. For very good reasons too. Cost is only one of the factors.
61
Andy
This maybe a first, but on this occasion I want Peter to be absolutely right in his contribution.
Why? because I am surrounded with devices using Li batteries: phones, cameras, tablets, laptops, cordless domestic and garage equipment.
All needs charging regularly. I do’t want to have to sit on the floor next to the cordless vac cleaner for 2-3 hours whilst it recharges, lest it burst into flames.
I am sure that I can’t be the only one who hopes PF is correct on this topic.
41
Its the size and density of the charge that are the real worry.
50
Where as YouTube has many phone on fire —
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=phone+catches+fire
41
Pete,
The luddites here will just see it as fake news and , like everything else , demand more evidence.
27
too true, debate is difficult on this site
37
Nah Michael..It is you & Fitz who are closed to new thinking and facts..
No converts to be made here by either of you.
We are just to sceptical of propaganda and lies.
Soooo..Bugger off again !
61
Good old bill – are you so scared of a debate?
38
Patricia – no one is scared of debate…bring it on.
Every time the Goracle is asked to pony up, he runs away.
Everytime sceptics ask for a debate, your side runs away.
We arent the problem ….
Meh
111
Ludite.
You keep using that word. Somehow I don’t think it means what you think it means.
(spoiler – The Ludite movement were a group interested in stopping the industrialisation of the weaving industry in order to maintain production at traditional ‘cottage’ levels. It was not so much a group scared of progress, but a group scared of progress that was going to put them out of work. Best think of it as a labour dispute.)
Also, for those playing at home we have another prime example of how Lefties Win Friends and Sway Arguments.
Step One – State the correct answer to a problem (electric vehicles are the way of the future)
Step Two – Observe responses (electric vehicles cannot compete directly with IC vehicles and will not ever be in a position to directly replace them one for one due to range and recharge, would swamp current power generation abilities and issues about ‘peak lithium’.)
Step Three – realise there are heretics
Step Four – insult all those who disagree (‘The luddites here..’)
110
Original S,
Since you can’t/won’t debate scientists on planet Earth because your ‘evidence’ falls flat each time, you have to hide out in this kindergarten pretending to be Galileo.
Clearly, you are the ones running away from the facts.
28
Michael262 asserts:
That’s not cleat to me Troll.
Here’s some of your delusional greenie “facts” for you. When you can demonstrate that they are true I’ll listen to you:
“Snow will be a thing of the past”.
“Arctic summers will be ice-free by 2013″.
“We have ‘less than 100 months to act’ to save the planet”.
“There’s just five years to avoid disastrous global warming.
“Our results show that temperature records of at least 17 years in length are required for identifying human effects on global-mean tropospheric temperature”.
Until that time, you’re just another out-of-touch alarmist troll.
91
Michael, I think that MudCrab has beaten me to it, but many engineering types that frequent this forum have been involved in technology and unlike a true Luddite, are not frightened at all about new technology. However, we want to see technology introduced in a controlled way that in general, benefit mankind and contribute to our society in a positive fashion. To call these folks “Luddites” is I believe just a nasty Ad Hominem attack and contributes nothing to a technical discussion. Next time may I suggest try debating the subject material if you can.
61
‘…won’t debate scientists on planet Earth because your ‘evidence’ falls flat each time …’
We have evidence that CO2 has no part to play in global warming.
https://4k4oijnpiu3l4c3h-zippykid.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/clip_image002-2.png
40
“debate is difficult on this site”
Particularly when YOU are totally incapable of putting forward even the slightest evidence to back up the very foundation of the AGW scam, Fritz.
You don’t debate.. you bluster, rant and avoid giving any actual scientific evidence.
You present NADA, ZIP……. NOTHING!
41
“are you so scared of a debate?”
Come on then Fitz,
Do you have any actual empirical evidence of warming by atmospheric CO2?
Or will you remain the empty sad-sack you have always been.
51
“Clearly, you are the ones running away from the facts.”
Bring your FACTS, mickey drone
So far you have presented NOTHING that could be called a scientific fact.
You are even emptier than Fitz , if that is even possible !
Just an echo chamber.. an EMPTY VASSAL.
61
“because your ‘evidence’ falls flat each time”
STILL WAITING for empirical evidence of warming by atmospheric CO2, mickey moose.
Been waiting a long, long time.
and will continue to wait… because there ISN’T ANY
Warming by atmospheric CO2 has NEVER been observed or measured anywhere on the planet.
And THAT’S A FACT.
51
Come on Mickey and Frizt,
A simple question..
In what way has the climate changed in the last 40 years that can be scientifically (ie empirical evidence) be attributed to human release of CO2?
Remember, un-validated models are NOT evidence of anything.
We are waiting for you to bring NOTHING but empty blather to the table, as always.
61
Keep in mind that the current global temperature is similar to the temperature of the 1940’s by any real science. (ignoring the fabrication of GISS et al)
Keep in mind that the ONLY warming in the last 40 years has come from the 1998 El Nino step and the 2015-2017 El Nino transient, now basically gone.
Between 1980 and the 1998 El Nino, there was NO WARMING
And between the end of that El Nino in 2001, and the start of the 2015 El Nino transient, there was NO WARMING..
SO you see, there is absolutely ZERO WARMING in the last 40 years that can attributed to human action of any kind.
61
Moikle FitPatrick,
An education makes a world of difference to the sort of posts seen on this blog.
Anyone with a good scientific education can pick both you; M.FitzP and PeterFitzM as uneducated blogg clogggers who are here insulting our host.
There has been no insult given by myself, Andy or others to you that exceeds in unpleasantness what has been dished out by You to those using the blog as a genuine means of sharing and exploring concepts and information about the Global Warming Scam.
Just what you are doing here escapes me, unless you are being paid to generate red ticks?
It’s all very mysterious.
You aren’t learning anything.
You aren’t contributing anything.
You are not doing anything useful.
Perhaps it really is about Money.
Gettupim Rules.
61
James,
Peer review is the best we have, you attack it because it consistently rejects your poor science, hence your existence here.
The ancient geocentric model was, at the the time, the best explanation. But as more data was collected it was shown to be wrong, that’s peer review in action, please try it some time.
15
So, mickey moose,
Not even a basic attempt to answer the simple questions pertaining to the very basis of the AGW brain-bubble.
Rather PATHETIC to say the least.
You have NOTHING.
You ARE nothing.
31
So, After nearly 48 hours, the M&F comedy troll show have been totally unable to produce ANYTHING to prove that atmospheric CO2 causes warming.
So Sad. 🙂
00
Sceptical Gordo,
That great evidence, just submit it for review please, I need a laugh
11
“Oxford Professor: Aliens are Breeding with Humans Because of Climate Change”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/04/27/oxford-professor-aliens-breeding-with-humans-because-of-climate-change/
30
So you think total solar irradiance is irrelevant? Its the sun stupid.
40
Michael262 – do you have any idea about the realities of the peer review process? As with many things, it’s great in theory, but often flawed in practice.
Perhaps you’d better try reading a few papers, or at least consider the possibility that peer review is not some magical system of infallible and absolute validation. The geocentric model of the solar system was a result of what was essentially peer review…
50
“I need a laugh”
Your slap-stick comedy routine doesn’t rate a laugh.
00
Gosh, some evidence of electric bikes catching fire
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=e-bike+electric+bike+catches+fire
50
I think I will have to build a little fibre cement cube to sit my e-bike battery inside to charge it….and if it catches fire, douse it in CO2…..happy plants, happy planet….
40
master of the false equivalence
20
Any source of stored energy if mistreated can be dangerous. e.g. some grades of coal have to be stored with some water sprayed on them to prevent volatiles igniting in spontaneous combustion (Collie coal in WA).
The same with wood pellets being shipped, transported by rail and stored before use at Drax power station in England. The temptation is always to err on the side of caution with extra water (no-one wants a ship on fire). The result is poorer efficiency of combustion i.e. higher CO2 levels, and less electricity for a ton of fuel. That’s why brown coal, with higher water content, has higher CO2 emissions than black coal, and why australian high grade black coal is in demand in Asia.
Then there is the case of compressed gases. Do you know what a large ‘bottle’ of gas can do if the valve on top gets damaged? It acts like a torpedo and can go through at least 23cm. of reinforced concrete. It happened in the Chemistry Dept. at my Uni where the gas bottle demolished one laboratory before being deflected through the concrete roof into the next floor where it wrecked that lab. before smashing through the brick wall and damaging the lab. there. Moving a full gas bottle without it being held in the safety trolley was likely to have nasty consequences (flesh wounds from a savage professor too).
120
Naturally the Greens are gung-ho on large scale compressed gas storage.
80
… especially hydrogen. They don’t realise that hydrogen doesn’t stay compressed for long. It’s the original Houdini (escapologist) of gases, getting out of everything, or through it. It even diffuses through glass. I discovered dozens of papers about the rates of hydrogen diffusion through various glasses in the literature, including laboratory pyrex.
It’s very difficult to bottle just a proton … expecially when it’s not so attached to its accompanying electron. Thusly, the idea of a change to a hydrogen economy will cause a lot urban fires …
20
I saw an SBS show about the Titanic. One of it’s coal bunkers was on fire when it sailed across the Atlantic. the story was that it was going top speed to get to New York so that the fire in the bnker could be put out when it got there
41
Titanic: The New Evidence it was called and made mention they couldn’t slow down because there was barely enough coal to see them to the destination, a circumstance which today would be called “range anxiety”.
40
The problem was indeed ‘range anxiety’.
The best way of putting out a bunker fire was to empty the flaming coal from the bunker and put it in the furnace supplying the boilers.
This is why the Titanic was at full steam heading through an ice field. If they failed to use the energy of the coal from the firey bunker, they would have stopped somewhere in the Atlantic, adrift.
Not good for the news headlines if that happened.
20
In a RAEME workshop in the 70s, saw a dropped oxy cylinder do that, taking out a very large compressor ( another bang right there ) while making its escape.
10
The SLA batteries on my bike started to swell so I was thinking of going li-ion. They cost more but are lighter. Maybe I’ll stick to sla.
80
I would think twice about strapping a lion to your bike. Heavy, expensive, and prone to eating the rider.
20
lmao…..
the don’t do list is EVERYTHING that would occur daily in millions of homes if the EV uptake is anywhere near what ICEV is.
good luck with that
80
I think we need to stop and remind ourtselves of this fact:
EVs are the useless “solution” to a non-existant problem.
Isnt that the definition of insanity?
Why the heck are we even wasting breath on this stuff? 🙂
50
I’m with you OriginalSteve.
The time spent in pursuit of this technology verges on criminal in its wastefulness and that goes equally for all other observed green technology any of which is designed over its lifecycle not to save the emissions (the spurious and sole green criterion for assessing the worth of absolutely anything) generated in its manufacture –the epitome of malicious stupidity.
When you realize you are obliged to continue living with these advocates of idiocy until the crack of doom you can begin to sympathise with the Chinese penchant for re-education camps.
40
I fly remote controlled planes, a few with IC engines, but most LiPo battery powered. I own about 25 of these batteries, & wish I could get even 3 years out of my very carefully treated batteries. On average about 9 die each year.
Contrary to propaganda, the cost of my LiPo batteries has about doubled in the last 3 years.
I fly mostly at home, but about 20 times a year with a small local club. Most days there would be about 20 people with about 30 planes battery powered.
I have seen 6 battery fires in 3 years. One was in a crash, 2 were while the plane was sitting in the shade some time after a flight. The other 3 were while in flight. It is a spectacular sight when a plane bursts into flame while flying.
Incidentally, you can’t put out a LiPo fire. Like rocket fuel, they supply their own oxygen so can’t be smothered.
It is a great hobby, with the added advantage, that if you fly as well as I do, you become a very competent model aircraft repairer as well.
The only drawback is the mild fear that although I never have batteries near the house, I might just burn my shed down some day.
200
Can relate to that. Still in a club but haven’t flown for a few years.
40
just in case you were wondering about the up and coming motoE bike racing season . All the bikes burnt pre season
https://au.motorsport.com/motoe/news/motoe-cause-of-fire-disaster/4353467/
50
A tragedy indeed. Having seem the mind bending spectacle and excitement of Formula E , I was quivering with excitment when motoE was announced.
00
yes i fell asleep when i heard about motoE
00
Guidelines for Supervising a Charging Battery.
1. Sit close, but not too close.
2. When you see the first orange spark, run for your life.
3. According to Ms Stanford, the time between the first orange spark and the full-blown lightning bolt is approximately a nanosecond, so there is no time to waste.
160
Yep, the speed of light is about 1ft / nansecond so you really have to move along!
80
This proves there is a Gaia, but it’s obviously a sceptical Gaia, sending a warning not to use batteries 😉
Bob Brown – please take note !!!
80
Have you actually considered a life with out using batteries ?
To say the least….i think you would find it dissapointing and difficult !
Especially if you happen to need a heart pacemaker !
20
Did Bob Brown use fossil fuels to drive to QLD?
40
“Never charge your battery for longer than required. As a general rule, we suggest charging your batteries to up to 80% of their capacity. This will also support the longevity of your battery. We also recommend not running your battery down to empty prior to charging.”
In what universe would you reasonably expect the average consumer to behave this way? All of this can be automated , its nothing new. My 3 year old laptop stops charging when its happy and shuts down with charge remaining if I ignore its warnings. I doubt blame the customer is going to work for them.
70
I agree. I thought a lot of mobile phone and laptop batteries (etc), and indeed, better quality chargers included systems to maximise battery longevity. what reads as 100% is likely not the full capacity, just as 5% is not all that actually remains. As always, I am happy to be corrected.
00
“MotoE bosses have confirmed initial reports that a short circuit in one of their charging units appears to have been responsible for the devastating fire that destroyed the entire 2019 grid on Wednesday night at their second test in Jerez. The fire broke out in their shared paddock space, spreading rapidly and burning down the entire mobile structure, all 18 machines, and the teams’ laptops, tools, spare parts and riding kit.”
https://www.motorcyclenews.com/sport/motogp/2019/march/motoe-championship-in-doubt-after-catastrophic-fire/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MotoE_World_Cup
40
Bummerrr!! Impressive fire though. However the energy is not renewable; just one massive release and its all done.
10
switched to SkyUK from the IPL cricket for a few minutes during a break, and got non-stop CAGW at the top of their news hour:
28 Apr: Sky UK: Labour forces Commons vote to declare a ‘climate emergency’
Jeremy Corbyn has praised the “inspiring climate activism” seen in recent weeks and says it is a “wake-up call”.
By Emily Mee, news reporter and Alan McGuinness, political reporter
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn praised “the inspiring climate activism we’ve seen in recent weeks” and said it was a “massive and necessary wake-up call for rapid and dramatic action”.
He also said he hoped other countries would follow suit in declaring an emergency.
The party’s shadow business secretary, Rebecca Long-Bailey, told Sky’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday that the move was “the first step in a long list of radical action we want the government to take”.
“We want them to take action that’s commensurate with this national emergency,” she said.
“And in doing so, not just provide a better quality of life for people here and across the world, but also unlock the huge economic benefits of backing a green industrial revolution, which is what the Labour Party has been pushing for some time.”
She added that this would bring “economic benefits” to “many communities right across the UK through to manufacturing all the way through to energy efficiency measures”.
Teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg, who has been nominated for a Nobel peace prize for her campaign to tackle climate change, welcomed the move and said she was “hopeful”.
She said: “It is a great first step because it sends a clear signal that we are in a crisis and that the ongoing climate and ecological crises must be our first priority…
Speaking about the upcoming vote, Mr Corbyn said: “For young people, the climate emergency is the cause of their generation. And we in older generations must face up to this seriously…
“We want a world for those in countries worst affected by and least to blame for climate change and our young people.”…
https://news.sky.com/story/labour-forces-commons-vote-to-declare-a-climate-emergency-11705744
what I saw on Sky re the following was all from some anti-fracking movement’s perspective – not Greenpeace; this gives equal space to Engel:
28 Apr: Sky UK: Fracking tsar Natascha Engel quits ‘impossible’ role after six months
Natascha Engel says the system which halts fracking when a 0.5-magnitude tremor is recorded “amounts to a de facto ban”.
Natascha Engel said a traffic light system which halts fracking when a tremor with a magnitude of 0.5 is recorded “amounts to a de facto ban” and accused environmental activists of being “highly successful” in encouraging the government to curb fracking despite its “enormous potential”.
She also claimed government policy was being guided by fearmongering – not science and evidence…
Ms Engel said in her letter: “The UK could be on the cusp of an energy revolution the like of which we have not seen since the discovery of North Sea oil and gas.”
She added: “The UK is currently spending £7bn a year on importing gas – money that is not being used to build schools, hospitals or fix the potholes in our roads.
“Developing our own shale gas industry would mean money going into the Treasury rather than out.
“We know shale gas can be extracted safely. We have the best regulations and regulators in the world.
“We know the positive impact it has on local communities, but we are choosing to listen to a powerful environmental lobby campaigning against fracking rather than allowing science and evidence to guide our policy making.”…
Greenpeace said ministers should put the fracking industry “out of its misery” and focus instead on developing clean technologies.
Rebecca Newsom, Greenpeace UK head of politics, said: “Faced with a climate emergency, the last thing the UK needs is an industry that will only worsen our dependence on fossil fuels for decades to come.
“UK fracking has been a total waste of time, and we can’t afford to waste any more of it. Ministers should put this industry out of its misery and focus instead on backing the clean technologies like renewables and electric vehicles that can cut our emissions and create long-lasting jobs for the future.”…
https://news.sky.com/story/fracking-tsar-natascha-engel-quits-impossible-role-after-six-months-11705731
20
28 Apr: Daily Mail: Jeremy Corbyn forces MPs to vote on declaring climate emergency after Extinction Rebellion protests over political inaction
•Labour’s motion has been bolstered by endorsement of activist Greta Thunberg
•Acknowledging a full-blown crisis is one of Extinction Rebellion’s core demands
•Comes after a ten-day London rally which saw over 1,000 protesters arrested
•They glued themselves to trains, office buildings and Jeremy Corbyn’s house
By Jack Elsom
It will call for targets for the mass rollout of renewable and low-carbon energy and transport, properly-funded environmental protection measures to reverse the trend in species decline and plans to move towards a zero-waste economy…
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6967851/Jeremy-Corbyn-forces-MPs-vote-declaring-climate-emergency-Extinction-Rebellion-protests.html
28 Apr: UK Sun: SHALE FAIL Fracking tsar quits and blasts cowardly ministers who’ve given in to leftie eco-protesters
Natascha Engel accused the Government of ‘pandering to myths and scare stories’ by blocking shale gas fracking
By Hugo Gye
Natascha Engel walked out of her role after just six months – saying it’s pointless because green protesters are holding up fracking.
She accused ministers of caving to the likes of Extinction Rebellion and “pandering to myths and scare stories”…
Ms Engel blasted: “A perfectly viable and exciting new industry that could help meet our carbon reduction targets, make us energy secure and provide jobs in parts of the country that really need them is in danger of withering on the vine – not for any technical or safety reasons, but because of a political decision.
“We are listening to a small but loud environmental movement that opposes in principle all extraction of fossil fuels.
“The campaign against fracking has been highly successful in raising the profile and filling the coffers of some NGOs, but they do not represent local residents nor the wider population.
“I hope there will be a re-think sooner rather than later which will see policy guided by science, rather than fearmongering.
She complained about a legal regime which sees fracking halted in response to earth tremors which are too small for people to feel them…
The US has slashed its oil imports since fracking for gas became widespread in Texas over the past few years.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/8956550/fracking-tsar-natascha-engel-quits/
40
Delingpole on that
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2019/04/28/delingpole-mays-fake-tory-government-caves-anti-fracking-loons/
51
Maybe we can create #MaysFakeGov tag?
20
I think the Elite are panicking – they double down when they are close to being exposed.
The only way they can basically stop their theiving of public money coming to light is to basically create a comunist govt through the Left, and use them to shut down all rights and liberties…..
30
28 Apr: Reuters: German government warming towards carbon tax – paper
by Georg Merziger
Germany looks set to introduce an economy-wide system of carbon emissions pricing after senior officials from both parties of Berlin’s governing coalition reached a consensus on the proposal, the Frankfurter Allgemeine reported on Sunday.
According to the newspaper, Economy Minister Peter Altmaier, a conservative, had come round to the idea after initially opposing the proposal by Social Democrat Environment Minister Svenja Schulze.
“It looks like a form of CO2 pricing is going to come,” the newspaper quoted an Economy Ministry official as saying…
The proposal would make electricity generated from renewable sources such as wind and solar cheaper compared to the coal-fired power that Germany plans to phase out over the next three decades.
Under the proposal backed by both ministries, the increased costs to consumers and businesses would be compensated by tax cuts elsewhere so the net tax burden would not increase…
???An increasingly restive public is raising the pressure on governments around the world to act more decisively to slow emissions amid evidence that catastrophic climate change is becoming an ever more real prospect.
But many businesses fear the costs of climate protection legislation could be crippling…
The proposal would extend carbon pricing in Germany to areas such as transport and construction that are not covered by a European Union-wide system of tradeable carbon emissions.
The paper said officials aimed to introduce a certificate-based scheme, rather than one that relied on a formal carbon tax
http://news.trust.org//item/20190428114038-aa3r3/
20
pat:
The chemical industry has been building its new plants outside Germany for some years. I looked at this a few years ago but haven’t the data to hand, but over 20 new plants were set for other countries, other countries in the EU, countries such as India and Malaysia and the USA, where electricity AND raw material costs have dropped. I think they aren’t going to be surprised, but if some of those huge plants in Germany start closing down then the Government will be.
60
27 Apr: FairviewPost: Trudeau’s ‘revenue neutral’ carbon tax claim omits GST
by Lorrie Goldstein
Because the 5% GST is applied to a broad range of goods and services after all other taxes and prices have been included, it will also apply to Trudeau’s carbon tax, as a tax on a tax. (Or, in some cases, a tax on a tax on a tax.)
The same is true for provincial sales taxes, when it comes to assessing the full impact of Trudeau’s carbon tax of $20 per tonne of industrial greenhouse gas emissions this year, rising to $50 per tonne in 2022 and after that, if Trudeau wins re-election on Oct. 21, who knows?
For Ontario households, that means in calculating the true cost of Trudeau’s carbon tax on us, we have to add on the 13% HST (5% GST, plus 8% provincial sales tax) to it, for gasoline, natural gas and many other goods and services.
Ironically, the Ontario government is also getting increased revenue from Trudeau’s carbon tax which Premier Doug Ford, who is challenging Trudeau’s carbon tax in court, doesn’t want.
A report by the federal Parliamentary Budget Office last week which said Trudeau’s carbon tax would raise $2.63 billion this year rising to $6.21 billion annually in 2023 in the four provinces where he’s imposed it — Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and New Brunswick — did not include the impact of the GST or provincial sales taxes in the costs to the public.
Since the GST applies to fossil fuels such as gasoline, diesel and natural gas, which will generate the lion’s share of carbon tax revenues in these four provinces ($2.4 billion this year, rising to $5.77 billion in 2023) it’s obvious the impact on household budgets of the GST alone will be huge…READ ON
https://www.fairviewpost.com/opinion/columnists/goldstein-trudeaus-revenue-neutral-carbon-tax-claim-omits-gst/wcm/171e9abc-908e-4b0b-9f99-5b231b4c9c11
30
Labor’s key climate policies failing to win support from voters, new poll reveals
Daily Telegraph – 28 Apr 2019
Fewer than one in three voters backs Labor’s 50 per cent electric car target, an exclusive new poll reveals…
Bill Shorten has been under pressure to reveal the cost of Labor’s plan during the first two weeks of the election campaign…
90
another small excerpt found:
The Opposition’s revamped carbon trading scheme is also backed by just 35 per cent …
60
some may recall this incident:
22 Apr: ABC15: Solar storage facilities present unique hazard for firefighters
By Cameron Polom
SURPRISE, AZ — Eight firefighters are recovering after being injured in an explosion at an Arizona Public Service Co. facility in Surprise Friday night.
According to Peoria fire officials, multiple fire agencies were investigating a battery fire at the McMicken Energy Storage facility near Grand Avenue and Deer Valley Road when the explosion occurred.
ABC15 got a tour of a similar storage facility in 2017. Inside sits two four megawatt hour batteries that store solar power during the day and release the energy to neighborhoods in the evening when usage hits its peak.
But, when those batteries are exposed to heat like fire, the substance inside the batteries reacts and explodes.
Phoenix Fire crews showed ABC15 video of an electric car battery sparking and exploding after a crash. The growing technology, while revolutionizing economies and supplying new-found clean energy, remains a concern for those tasked with facing them when their stability is lost.
Phoenix Fire said as more of our daily essentials like our phones, cars or even the energy we use in our homes moves to renewable sources – learning to battle battery fires is a top priority.
“Basically you need to overwhelm it with more water than you think you would need,” said a Phoenix Fire Department spokesperson.
They say lithium-ion batteries will reignite when drenched even after it appears the flames are out.
First responders have since made training for these fires a constant focus.
https://www.abc15.com/news/region-west-valley/surprise/solar-storage-facilities-present-unique-hazard-for-firefighters
the investigation so far:
23 Apr: AZ Central: ‘Reasons that are still unknown’: 30 experts investigate Surprise battery explosion that injured 9
A team of about 30 experts is investigating the Friday night explosion at a large battery owned by Arizona Public Service Co. that sent eight firefighters and one police officer to hospitals, officials said Tuesday.
APS officials answered questions about the incident from the Arizona Corporation Commission, their first public comments since the fire.
Investigators have not determined the cause of the explosion, and APS has shut down two other large batteries in Arizona until the investigation is complete. Officials made no public estimate of how long that might take.
Guldner said APS was alerted to the problem Friday at about 5 p.m., when APS and Fluence, the company that sold APS the battery and monitors it, both received alarms of something amiss at the battery.
A maintenance company dispatched a worker to the site in Surprise, and APS also sent workers there. The fire department also was called.
A hazardous-materials team began assessing the situation, cordoned off the area and shut down nearby streets, Guldner said.
“For reasons that are still unknown, at around 8 p.m., the system experienced a catastrophic failure,”Guldner said. “There was an explosion.”…
Big plans for batteries unchanged
APS earlier this year announced plans to install about $1 billion in dozens more batteries like the one that exploded Friday. The batteries will capture and store surplus energy, mostly from solar power plants and rooftop solar panels, and use it in the evening when the sun sets and solar panels stop making electricity.
“This hasn’t changed our determination to move forward on that,” Guldner said. “It is very important we conduct this investigation and understand how we can safely operate this equipment. This is where the industry is going. What is happening here in Arizona … we are at the leading edge on some of these technologies.”
The battery that exploded at the APS McMicken Energy Storage facility near Grand Avenue and Deer Valley Road was a 2 megawatt battery. APS plans to install an additional 850 megawatts of batteries around the state.
The McMicken facility battery is one of two that APS installed two years ago to help accommodate large amounts of rooftop solar power on the grid. The other battery is in the Festival Ranch neighborhood, about 10 miles west of the Loop 303 off Bell Road.
Public concern about chemicals
Commissioner Sandra Kennedy asked APS officials about the threat to nearby homes from the explosion.
The battery is about a quarter mile from the nearest home, Guldner said. But explosions in lithium-ion batteries can produce cyanide and hydrofluoric acid, he said.
“Do you have an evacuation plan put in place for instances such as this where there are homes within a fourth of a mile and did you notify homeowners that they could be exposed to these chemicals?” Kennedy said.
Tetlow said there was no reason to believe the chemicals would migrate beyond the site.
“There would not have been an evacuation plan for that because of the limited nature of the release,” Tetlow said. “But I want to commit the investigation will look at, are there any things we should be doing with pedestrians passing by or residents.”…
Batteries as big as houses
The McMicken and Festival Ranch batteries are identical. They each are about the size of a cargo container, packed wall to wall inside with batteries in cabinets that look like school lockers.
They require constant cooling to maintain a temperature of 75 degrees and prevent them from overheating. Workers can enter the facility, but the batteries do not require constant staffing. They are monitored remotely.
This is the second fire that APS has had at a battery installation. The other was in Flagstaff. APS installed that battery in 2010 and it ignited in 2012 and threatened to ignite a larger blaze.
Prior to Friday, the Flagstaff battery fire and one other in 2012 in Hawaii are the only incidents involving utility-scale batteries APS officials are aware of in the U.S., though there have been others overseas, Tetlow said…
https://www.azcentral.com/story/money/business/energy/2019/04/23/arizona-public-service-provides-update-investigation-battery-fire-aps-surprise/3540437002/
40
watch video at second link below:
23 Apr: WNYT: Family escapes early morning Raymertown fire
“By the time we pulled through it was too late,” said Raymertown Volunteer Fire Chief Steve LeBlanc. “They were already into the first floor or into the basement, so everything was burnt through.”…
The preliminary determination was that they had a fire in an outdoor stove on the front porch Monday night that wasn’t completely out when they went to bed…
Propane tanks hooked to the back of the house were removed and turned off but the power source to the solar panels kept burning and at one point exploded.
https://wnyt.com/news/fire-burn-house-raymertown-destroyed/5326867/
TWEET: Asa Stackel, NewsChannel 13 Albany
John was preparing for a live report when a solar panel battery exploded in a house fire in Raymertown. Six escaped the house thanks to smoke detectors…
VIDEO: 47 sec
23 Apr 2019
https://twitter.com/AsaStackelNews/status/1120654474287243264
30
I am still running the original lead acid wet cell battery in my 1984 motorcycle. It nearly dried out once when parked for a few years with the ignition left on. A bit of tap water revived it and it still holds 13V. Admittedly kick start only. I have used gel cell and Li-ion in other bikes. Never got more than 3 or 4 years out of them.
60
found this by chance and couldn’t access it at BloombergQuint unless I changed to google chrome or something!
24 Apr: Mining.com: Bloomberg: Explosions threatening lithium-ion’s edge in a battery race
By Brian Eckhouse and Mark Chediak
At least 21 fires had already occurred at battery projects in South Korea, according to BloombergNEF. But this latest one, erupting on Friday at a facility owned by a Pinnacle West Capital Corp. utility in Surprise, Arizona, marked the first time it has happened in America since batteries took off globally.
Local regulators are now demanding answers, companies are investigating the cause, and analysts are wondering: Could more blazes threaten the future of lithium-ion — the only technology that has proven capable of bringing battery storage into the mainstream?
“If these fires continue to occur, it doesn’t bode well for the industry in the short term and the storage market will almost certainly slow down,” said Ravi Manghani, an analyst at Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables. “As other technologies mature and costs fall, it would certainly erode lithium-ion’s advantage.”
Here’s the issue for lithium-ion: while not inherently dangerous, when handled incorrectly, a potential hazard can occur. The electrolytes used today are flammable in the presence of oxygen, said James Frith, a London-based analyst at BNEF. While batteries are sealed from external sources of oxygen, some cathodes can release oxygen within the cell under high temperatures.
The explosions are coming at an inopportune time for the industry. Nothing has done more to fuel the global battery boom than the plunge in lithium-ion prices. Costs have fallen to a level at which batteries can compete against conventional power plants, and everyone from solar developers to utilities to homeowners are buying them to shore up intermittent renewable energy supplies. Pinnacle West’s Arizona Public Service alone has a goal of adding 850 megawatts of storage by 2025 — enough to light up more than 600,000 homes at once.
But that goal was set before Friday’s blast. On Tuesday, Arizona Public Service told the state’s utility regulators that it had shut two other battery systems following the explosion…
While APS hasn’t determined the cause of the accident, spokeswoman Jill Hanks said it probably involved some sort of “equipment failure.” The system being investigated was installed by Fluence, a joint venture of AES Corp. and Siemens…
Commissioners peppered APS officials at the meeting with questions about the fire-suppression system at the site and asked whether similar incidents have occurred. Jacob Tetlow, vice president of the company’s transmission and distribution operations, noted that there was once a battery failure at a substation in 2012.
Commissioner Sandra Kennedy called for a “thorough investigation” to ensure the protection of residents and businesses in the area.
“If utilities and regulators deem energy storage unsafe, gigawatts of proposed storage deployments would be threatened”.
In Korea, defective battery models, external shock during construction and faulty battery-management systems may have contributed to recent fires at factories, according to Logan Goldie-Scot, a San Francisco-based storage analyst at BNEF.
The blazes at battery plants are hitting just as smaller, lithium-ion batteries used in electric cars are also coming under scrutiny. This week, Tesla Inc. said it was looking into a sedan that caught fire on video in China.
It’s become a potential selling point for rivals of lithium-ion. Tom Stepien, chief executive officer of Primus Power Corp., a battery company that uses a technology known as flow, was quick to note lithium-ion’s “inherent fire risks” after Friday’s accident. It’s for that very reason, he said, that people are warned at airports not to carry such batteries onto planes…
http://www.mining.com/web/explosions-threatening-lithium-ions-edge-battery-race/
40
“Costs have fallen to a level at which batteries can compete against conventional power plants”
Batteries generate NO power.
Batteries are a nett power drain and a nett cost to the system. They are installed only when advantageous tariffs have been negotiated.
Just like all other “renewable” power.
71
Another way to avoid what happened is to not purchase one of those to begin with.
70
I hate batteries in general; they’re a PITA.
Batteries in my watch, phone, tablet, computer, remotes, garage door opener, car, car key, headphones, mouse, flashlight and more. They all suck!
But I suppose they must be very good for the environment because the ecoloons seem to love them!
121
Brings new meaning to ‘Chariots of Fire’.
90
In Belgium our electrical company has tested big batteries to bachup wind power and they just blow up in flames…
see the report on stopthesethings
50
When comparing “vehicle fires”, remember this.
The cause of fires in ICEVs is almost never the fuel tank spontaneously combusting. It is far more likely to be either flammable materials adjacent to hot components , or electrical faults Both are more common in older vehicles a category in which EVs are even less well represented than their current microscopic market share.
Secondly, and contrary to the movies, ICEVs very rarely go “BANG” due to the fuel. I recently attended a multiple-vehicle fire in which the synthetic and some alloys burnt with enthusiasm, yet alloy fuel tanks all contained unburnt Diesel. Even when the top of the alloy tank had burnt off!
A major study of firefighting vehicles caught in “burn over” situations in wildfires, found not one single case in which a properly vented fuel tank exploded or presented an additional fire risk to the crew. Synthetic materials in the cabin were another matter.
Here is the difference. Most vehicle fires occur when the vehicle is in use. Which means that the user is awake and – if not trapped by a collision – able to exit the vehicle. Te incident that prompted this discussion involved an explosion while the vehicle was not in use, a scenario that commonly involves those close being asleep if we accept the common argument that EVs will be charged overnight.
Finally….
If you are trapped in a vehicle collision and a firefighter like me attends, our normal equipment will enable us to keep you and the other emergency personnel relatively safe from fire while they stabilise your injuries, dismantle the vehicle around you, and get you into the ambulance. That is, if we are dealing with petrol or diesel. If you are sitting on a damaged LIon battery?……. well prayer can’t hurt
Short version, arguing that a fire is a fire is a fire is ignorant at best, and probably dishonest.
101
It seems that the “thumbs down” has become the retort of those who dislike reality but cannot come up with a rational counter-argument.
It has a legitimate use, but not for those too lacking in integrity to either accept the truth, or debate it honestly.
10
It’s just a kiddy passing through who has to stick their bottom lip out because you or I said something which didn’t agree with what they were told at school …. poor things.
10
Supervise the charging? Does that mean you need to be close to hand when the explosion goes off?
50
This is what caught my eye
“ The average lifespan of a lithium ion battery is 3-5 years,..”
How does that work out in the economics of an electric car?
40
I suspect the battery is LiPoly and that lifespan is realistic when the battery is used to its full capacity on a regular basis; like 5 times per week full cycle.
I have two 5Ah 6S LiPoly batteries that get used now and then, purchased in 2007. Are checked for charge status and balance at least once a year and still hold full capacity.
I have a 5kWh LiFePO4 battery that has been running my fridge and freezer off-grid on solar source since 2013. On sunny days it would not cycle more than 30% of its capacity. It is never charged more than 90% of capacity and has discharged twice to about 10% of capacity, where it cuts out. Under these conditions of daily cycling it should last at least 5000 days, which is almost 14 years. It might last 10,000 days or more. Cycle life depends on many factors. Peak discharge is no more than 0.1C with this battery. This chart gives an indication of how use alters cycle life:
https://files.ev-power.eu/inc/_img/evpower_blog/998/FAQ_LiFePO4_cycle-life_based_on_DOD1.gif
Charts like this are based on rapid cycling tests so do not give insight into other ageing factors that come with time and varying ambient conditions. I have seen two LiFePO4 cells swell after internal faults; both about 6 year old cells from the same supplier but different capacities.
Cycle life is one of the reasons why owners would not want to give retailers or distributors access to their battery controls to support the grid. They could be giving away a huge slice of the battery life for little compensation. If you were getting the capped price of $14/kWh then it would bear consideration. as it would only need about 50 such cycles to pay for replacement and it would handle that.
20
I’ve seen suggestions in a couple of places, that EV batteries could be used as storage for renewable energy when it’s being generated, then put back into the system when it’s not. My thinking at the time was the cycle life issue and if the battery was discharged by sending the energy back to the grid it’s not available to drive the car.
30
EV battery accompanied by a super-capacitor. The capacitor can be charge cycled quickly and often.
00
This is a prime indicator of a badly designed consumer product, done by people who shouldn’t be designing consumer products.
Its basically saying ‘we didn’t want to put in the most basic of charging control circuits into this product – stuff that’s been standard in battery-charging devices for a decade now – because it would eat up into our profit margin (or we’re too stupid to understand why those things are standard equipment on everything else)’.
Anything that ‘requires supervision’ is something that has to be designed to never need to be plugged in for more than 15 minutes. Any longer and it will be left unattended.
30
I wonder if you can teach your batteries to do tricks? Its like supervising a dog….
Roll over…play dead…
*BANG*…..oh well….
20
So what is the climate doing in our part of the world ?
E M Smith has just posted on the homogenised weather reacord for Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, PNG Philippines and Pacific Islands..
Interesting stuff in the charts
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2019/04/28/ghcn-v3-3-vs-v4-anomaly-australia-pacific-islands/
40
The detail provided by E M Smith is these charts is daunting…
There is so much of it for 37 countries in the regional set.
but some things stand out like a . dogs balls..
The huge differences in the records between Samoa & American Samoa.
This is basically the same group of Pacific Islands
Divided by political system..
one independent
One still a US dependency.
41
I got a red thumb for reporting real scientific observation !
Wow, there is a real dopey idiot among us,
Who does not get science at all.
Sighhhhhh !
Meanwhile here is E M Smith’s conclusion for his post :
“In Conclusion, IMHO the degree of change of what ought to be the same data from the same instruments between these “versions” of the “same” data indicate that any warming found is as likely to be error, or more likely to be error, than anything real.
Just looking at the anomaly profiles shows that islands located in the same body of water with nearly constant sea surface temperatures have very different profiles, or shapes of the plotted data. How do you do that when the environment is the same from island to island?
My best guess is that it is local siting issues (in particular measuring at airports with changes of size, materials, and traffic – from grass shack by a Pan Am Clipper seaport to 10,000 foot of concrete and Jet Age Vacationing), or just flat out lousy measuring.
What I do NOT see in the data is a general and steady increase in warming, year over year, across many stations; the kind of thing CO2 and radiative blocking ought to cause.”
Now that just about ends
The discussion on CO2 in my opinion.
But the red thumbing, scared
Un scientific thinkers are welcome to stay scared.
It is their right as a human being.
But any attempt to make the rest of us,
Also feel scared, is fake dopey news.
61
Bill,
There’s at least three of them. It’s just that the other two are taking their afternoon sleep while sucking on their dummies.
They’ll be spitting them soon enough.
40
Bill…..
I received a thumb-down for reporting something that is well known to most firefighters. Reality is not popular in some circles, it seems.
51
Arson, or assault on battery?
Will the battery be charged?
50
I’m surprised no one has brought up the root cause of all this.
Thermal Runaway.
It’s a problem with all batteries. (excepting those dry cells, eg smaller batteries like AA, AAA, D and C and buttons.)
During my time in the RAAF, I worked for six Months in the ‘Battery Room’ at Williamtown, servicing aircraft batteries.
It was a hazardous environment, and one where safety procedures were adhered to on a ‘red hot’ basis.
There were two areas, kept apart from each other, one for Lead Acid Batteries, (aircraft and automotive) and Alkaline Batteries, (NiCad for the Mirage lll) and the two never mixed.
Servicing procedures were different for each, and each had specific safety procedures, things to be fully aware of.
One of the problems associated more with the Alkaline Batteries was Thermal Runaway, and until you’ve actually seen it, it’s basically just a term. After you’ve seen it, then you understand the end phrase ….. Runaway, because that’s what you feel like doing.
It’s a scary thing, and one I only saw once, thank heavens.
The NiCads we used for the Mirage had 19 and 20 cells, (38AH and 40AH) and those cells are connected in Series inside a hard metal box.
Just one dud cell, (and you never know until it actually starts) can start the problem, and it rapidly then proceeds to all other cells in a ‘domino’ effect.
It’s scary to see, and here, keep in mind that this was in a controlled environment, specifically set aside for just Battery charging.
A number of batteries are connected to the charging Unit, and there were anything up to 3 Chargers in use at any one time, sometimes with six or so batteries connected to each charger.
Once the Runaway started, and it happened quickly, and without warning, (you see the electrolyte venting off) you take your heart in your hand, turn off the charger, disconnect the battery, remove it to a safe place, and keep away from it. Once the process has started, that’s it, the battery is (quite literally) cooked. And you need to do this as quickly as you feasibly can, if safe to approach, because if not, all you could do was isolate the power and keep away, and hope it hadn’t proceeded too far already.
It could take anything up to hours for it to be approachable. The hard (very hard) plastic cells are melted and you can tell where it started, because the melting extends outwards cell by cell from the start point.
You don’t save anything from this. Every cell is finished. Like I said there were 19 and 20 cells, and they can be interchanged with spares during the maintenance process, if they look suspect, the cells could be changed, keeping in mind that a ‘turnaround’ for a NiCad was usually a week to ten days, from coming in for servicing to leaving. You usually deep cycle, (fully discharge back to zero, shorting out each cell as the last part of that process) then pull the battery down, check each cell, rebuild, and then slow charge back to maximum, done on a time basis, over a long charge time. Then, while waiting to go back out to another aircraft, they occasionally get a trickle charge.
At no time during any of those charging processes will there be any indication that a Thermal Runaway could be imminent. You don’t know, until it actually starts.
Now, having said all that, keep in mind here that we were Electrical tradesmen trained to do just that, fully versed in every aspect of battery work, and in an environment specifically set aside for work on batteries.
The problem of Thermal Runaway is also one associated with Lithium Ion Batteries as well.
The main point here is that you don’t know it’s happening until it actually starts.
Tony.
150
Scary stuff Tony.
30
Thanks Tony !
Actual live experience
of the reasons why battery
power, is dangerous.
30
On the Mirages, Battery changes were don on a Monthly basis.
The batteries were sent to the Battery Room. (as that facility was called, a stand alone building) There were two forms of servicing, a Bay Service and an Overhaul. The Overhaul was where they were pulled down and rebuilt. Each cell had to be removed. As they were hard and opaque cream coloured cells, you could check them. Virtually all cells came straight out. Sometimes, an occasional cell was difficult to remove, and right there was a bit of a clue, as if they did get ‘hot’ during usage, the plastic might heat a little and thus stick to the next cell. Sometimes, they would even show a slight bulge, also an indicator of an internal overheat problem. If they did stick, (only occasionally) then they got a check over, suspicions having been aroused. As they were cream coloured, then you might notice a change in the colour, more towards a yellowing, in varying degrees, indicating the probability of heat during usage. ‘Vernier’ eyeballs (a technical term here) said that even the slightest hint of maybe, possibly, the slightest tint away from cream meant that cell was replaced. No chances taken, anything not that ‘pure’ cream colour meant that cell was replaced, no questions asked. I did see some with real yellowing, and they were all kept for reference. Once ‘cold’, they were safe.
I saw many cells with that even slightest colour change, and they were all changed, and the NCO in charge of the Battery Room was always informed of the change, and shown the cell to verify the possible overheat, and both cells each side of the questionable one were then checked as well. That was the ONLY clue, and that was only during a full Overhaul, breakdown and rebuild.
Just that one time of the Thermal Runaway was enough for me, and what surprised me was that once word got out, (the normal reporting process) and that was immediately upon sighting of it, Senior NCO’s and Elec EngO’s came from everywhere to see it, all standing around (at a distance) watching the process, and very few of them had ever seen a full blown Runaway, they were so rare.
Our BattRm NCO, once I told him, and I think I yelled it from the entrance to the Alkaline Room, came and stood alongside me, and casually said, well, off you go then, you know what to do. And that battery was hot let me tell you, just from lifting it by the handles, and they weren’t light either. Full white overalls, full length heavy rubber apron, Gauntlets, and head guard, with the big visor pulled down. Rush but don’t rush.
Again, this was with trained people and in a specific place to do all this, not just in your garage, as an average citizen.
Tony.
100
plenty of you-tubes on this. LiPo safety is a core component of the drone pilot license.
16
YouTube videos!
That’ll sure help.
100 Mirages. A few hundred over engineered Batteries designed specifically for military combat aircraft use. A stand alone brick facility, specifically designed for battery maintenance. Qualified electrical tradesmen, further specifically trained in battery maintenance.
Millions of EV’s and Home Batteries for solar panel use. Simplified lightweight batteries for flat surface car use and wall mountings at homes. Home Garages for car charging and solar usage batteries, some actually inside homes. Joe Citizen.
What could possibly go wrong. Thank heavens for YouTube.
Tony.
110
I was talking about thew out of control combustion on video for all to witness.
The recommended storage and transport of these batteries, especially LiPo, is with a low charge. If charged store in a facility that contains the fire’s fury so as not to burn other things. A vented metal box in the shed for instance.
Do not leave them charging and walk away.
11
Yep. That’s a solution.
At least you admit that they burn and kill.
That’s a start.
40
Who got killed?
15
See this is about what you expect, the posters on this site love to say how logical and sensible they are, and then when you ask a question – crickets (red thumbs are their signature). The only fatality I found was a baby who swallowed a button battery, but since this is about battery fires, it does not count.
16
Tallmadge D’Elia.
20
Spencer Lynch
Merrimac Ellis
20
Bradley Ireland
20
Arun Gopalratnam
20
Marek Kruger
20
So your first one
Tallmadge D’Elia.
Was killed by an exploding vape pipe
04
Your research skills are showing a distinct lack of development.
Try harder.
Let me give you a clue.
Battery. As in:
“Larger vaporizers — such as the device found in the St. Petersburg case — come with much larger and more powerful batteries.”
Now, do your homework.
30
Juan Gonzalez.
20
How many more do you want?
Now, one for you given your:
We’ve all been waiting for your “scientific” explanation of how man-made CO2 causes catastrophic global warming.
40
Marek Kruger was a cancer patient who died from smoke inhalation – you names are stupid
06
Try haarder.
And the smoke was a result of what exactly?
Let me give you a clue:
Battery.
The only stupid thing around here are those who cannot accept the evidence when it’s handed to them on a plate.
They victims of “death by battery” may have been stupid, as you say. However, they believed the propaganda. Just like you.
90
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3432712/Bedridden-cancer-patient-dies-suffering-burns-smoke-inhalation-lifeline-mobile-phone-caught-fire-charged-pillow.html
The phone caught on fire under his pillow while he was charging it.
Fitz, you have just demonstrated again why you and GetUp! are nothing more than a green/left untruthful trolling outfit.
50
ScepticalSam: you’re assuming two things, which should be working together but often aren’t:
– the ability to read
– the ability to comprehend what was read.
Remember primary school? Reading and Comprehension
pFitz seems to have a sinusoidal wandering disconnection between these two skills: sometimes they’re in phase, sometimes right out of phase and usually with an unknown differential most of the time.
40
Morning Tony
As always, an informative and informed post from yourself. As you point out, the devil is in the detail and most people don’t know the detail. Battery maintenance is likely to be a significant cost for anyone thinking of going off-grid.
Coincidentally, I got myself an e-bike about 3 months ago and the lithium battery procedures were news to me. (Don’t fully charge or fully discharge, keep cool, store at 60% charged etc). A lot more fiddly than expected, and it makes you wonder how they’re supposed to be expect them to work in Australia with long distances and high temperatures.
On the positive side, the system I’ve got (Bosch) has an internal battery monitor to diagnose problem cells and to share the charge/discharge cycle load across the cells. But I still only charge in 30 minute increments and run the battery between 30% and 80% loaded.
Cheers,
Speedy.
60
Most reputable Ebike battery packs , should have internal “BMS” systems to protect against overcharging, (HVC), over discharging (LVC) , thermal protection cut off, charge and discharge rate limiting, in addition to the cell ballancing and error warnings..
Your charger should also be programmed to optimise the charge “profile” to prevent overcharging, or even stat charging a defective/compromised pack.
Unfortunately these “BMS” systems are very complex and much less reliable than the cells themselves.
To the point where The “BMS”. ..Battery Management System ..is sometimes referred to as the ….”Battery Murdering System”
30
Respecting your experience Tony, ..
..however i am sure you will agree that technology and knowledge has improved dramatically over the passing years to the point where NiCad cells became (and still are) common household items with zero maintenance and automated charging.
Most folk will have used them in early cordless tools, battery toys, RC models , etc etc.
Whilst they have largely been replaced now ,..initially with NiMh, and more recently with various Lithium chemistrys …
My point is , you were at the cutting edge of early NiCad battery experience, learning all the time. Lithium batteries are going through a similar phase, but even more complex with programmable battery management and variable charge profiles etc.
Fundamentally the unit Lithium cells are stable, but dangerous because of the high energy content and reliance on external systems when in use.
Most issues/fires/etc are the result of external issues, poor installation/ wireing faults and human error.
In many cases, its like giving a teenager a can of lighter fuel and a box of matches !
10
Tony,
Further to your remarks on batteries, if there was such a great advancement in battery technology and achieving ever more power output from batteries why is there only a limited time available on Emergency Power on airline aircraft? On the B737 with loss of all generators there is only about 30/40 minutes of power available and this is about the same on other Boeing and Airbus aircraft. They are nickel cadmium batteries on that aircraft but time on emergency power has always been limited because you can’t get enough energy density into batteries, otherwise it would have been achieved long ago.
10
The Battery on a Mirage (and typically most combat aircraft, and I might suggest most Commercial aircraft) was the electrical source of absolute last resort. They had a large AC alternator, and a DC Generator. If the Generator failed, (on its own) the TRU would kick in, supplying rectified DC from the AC output of the alternator. If the Alternator failed on its own, then you still had DC to operate the aircraft, and a couple of Inverters to supply AC to some of the flight control indicators and the RADAR. (albeit for rudimentary operation of that) If either failed (singly) then the pilot could limp back home.
As both Alt and Gen were engine driven, then if the engine ‘went out’, then the only source of any electrical power was that Battery. It gave just minutes (sometimes just one) of critical power, mainly so the pilot could find a relatively safe place to eject, because the Mirage glided like a brick.
That’s why battery servicing was so critical, and still is these days. Even though it was a dreaded attachment for an ElecFitt, because of the singularly boring nature of the work, in a considered hazardous environment, and with the strict adherence to safety. I actually loved the work, and the extra time I spent there helped me when we were away on deployment later with 77 Squadron (in the three weeks directly before Cyclone Tracy) and they needed some battery work done. Darwin (the RAAF part of it) had a fully functional Battery Room, but no one to operate it, so I was suddenly the expert, and my ‘expertise’ gained me new found respect from a Sergeant who didn’t particularly like me all that much, but was impressed with my knowledge on how to work the place, something he had a basic idea about, but no actual training. It was a change for me to be patiently telling him how things were done, and more importantly why they were done like that. He firstly wanted me to go there on my own, and I flatly refused, which didn’t go down well at all. Then he wanted it done in a fraction of the time it was supposed to take, and I had to explain battery theory to him.
Now we want to put all that in the hands of the average ‘man in the street, with no training at all. I shudder to think what might happen, and it only needs to happen once.
Tony.
60
An interesting dose of reality Tony and encourages some consideration of how safety and operational effectiveness have been jumped over to bring wind turbines, solar panels and “storage” systems to the public.
Next week we will have hydrogen powered vehicles.
Maybe the next Big Bang might be closer than we think.
KK
40
Tony
“because the Mirage glided like a brick.”
Description I heard was that “it had the glide ratio of a brick dunny with the door open”
20
Defense today requires Li batteries to be placed in a steel box when not in use, for safety.
00
Our forces in Afghanistan had problems with these batteries, the RAAF wouldn’t accept them. It took some packets of Tim Tams to get the USAF to do it for them.
Note: Third hand story.
00
I was working on the APS 20 radar in the Neptunes when a new Sgt, fresh from Mirages was rotated to my bench. Mirage squadron guys can spend a lot of time on the tarmac, strapping Sir in and unstrapping him if he comes home, AND changing the Cirano radar. [The real radar repairs were done in the Maintenance sqn]
APS 20 is far bigger, higher voltages but primitive by comparison. He respected the gear and didn’t interfere. We are still friends 45 yrs later. Another Sgt, I think from Mirages too, almost killed both of them by getting involved where neither were competent.
20
I own one of those sooper-dooper tactical torches loved by American survivalists etc. It has the advantage of lighting up an entire paddock at the press of a button, which makes it a great emergency tool. This torch runs on multiple lithium camera batteries, which stay pretty well topped up when not in use, another handy feature for an occasional use emergency tool. It can be run on low intensity and flash, of course, but I’d rather use an ordinary torch for most purposes. All in all, it’s a good thing to have in the bush.
But if I leave that torch on full for any length of time…it cooks! I have no idea what safety practices are involved in using and maintaining South Australia’s Mt Lithium but they’d better be stronger than a promise from Elon Musk. (Moreover, as a confessed conspiracy theorist, I doubt we’d be told about any problems. Does anyone know how Elon’s car upholstery survives a single minute in the vacuum of space while being blasted with unimpeded photons? Miracle vegan foam?) Seriously, I would not want to hang out near any lithium rig bigger than that torch, which spends nearly all its time turned off.
30
If it gets hot in use , its because you are using the wrong batteries .
You should use “high drain” cells such as Sony VTc5.
00
Updated 9Feb 2018: ChannelNewsAsia: How your lithium-ion battery could be an explosive danger
With an increase in fires involving lithium-ion batteries, the programme Talking Point investigates the dangers of such batteries and why they go ‘boom’.
By Desmond Ng and Koh Xing Ying
A recent episode of Talking Point (LINK VIDEO 23MIN33SEC) showed just how lithium-ion batteries – used in personal mobility devices (PMDs) such as e-scooters, and electronic devices such as handphones, laptops and power banks – can pose fire risks…
Along with the growing popularity of PMDs here in recent years, there has been a spike in fire incidents involving them (LINK) – a 52 percent increase in 2017 from the same period in 2016…
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/cnainsider/lithium-ion-battery-charger-explode-fire-phone-scooter-9934958
00
27 Apr: Sky UK: SSE sparks new merger talks over £1bn energy retail arm
SSE has approached companies including TalkTalk about a deal to offload its household supply arm, Sky News learns.
By Mark Kleinman
SSE, one of Britain’s biggest gas and electricity suppliers, is scrambling to find a buyer or merger partner for its £1bn retail division months after scrapping a tie-up with rival Npower.
Sky News has learnt that SSE – formerly known as Scottish & Southern Energy – has held preliminary talks with a number of other utility providers, including TalkTalk, in recent weeks…
City insiders said this weekend it had stepped up efforts to find a suitor for the division, which supplies close to 6m households across Britain.
Alistair Phillips-Davies, SSE’s chief executive, is said to value the unit at about £1bn, a sum which is higher than some analysts believe it is worth.
A source close to SSE, which is being advised by Credit Suisse and Morgan Stanley, said it had floated the idea of a potential merger with TalkTalk, the broadband and telecoms supplier, in the last fortnight.
However, a tie-up between the two companies is regarded as highly unlikely to proceed…
The UK’s energy retail market has been shaken up by a series of Government-commissioned measures aimed at bolstering competition, and ending what critics have argued is oligopolistoc behaviour by the ‘big six’ suppliers.
In its statement announcing the abandonment of the npower deal, SSE cited “multiple factors including the performance of the respective businesses, clarity on the final level of the default tariff cap, changing energy market conditions and the associated implications of these for both the joint business plan and the market in which the business would be operating”.
More recently, SSE, which has a market value of close to £12bn, issued a profit warning on the back of a freeze in the UK’s energy capacity market auction, which pays companies to provide back-up power during the winter…ETC
https://news.sky.com/story/sse-sparks-merger-talks-over-1bn-retail-arm-11704902
28 Apr: CityAM UK: SSE talks to Talktalk over £1bn retail unit after scrapping Npower deal
by August Graham
The business segment has become less appealing after the a new price cap reduced expected adjusted operating margin to between two and three per cent, down from 6.8 per cent last year…
behind paywall:
28 Apr: UK Times: Ofgem warned over green energy delays
by Rachel Millard
Delays in processing applications from companies and individuals for a renewable-energy subsidy are “causing real hardship to a crucial industry”, the industry watchdog Ofgem has been warned.
The processing of applications for Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) accreditation is believed to have taken more than a year in some cases. Applications are made once a project is completed, so there can be a long wait to be reimbursed for costs already incurred.
The volume of work is thought to be one reason for the delays: 900 applications are believed to have been in the queue last October. Senior Ofgem figures are also said to have suggested that many of the applications are viewed with suspicion due to potential fr**d.
One industry figure said: “We have seen everything from a huge boiler in a distillery down to a very small boiler in a small business taking one …
10
behind paywall…the three cities named have increased populations…add placement of urban thermometers and!
28 Apr: UK Times: Overheated UK cities blaze past climate target
by Jonathan Leake
Britain’s cities have become global hotspots — but not in a good way.
Oxford, Sheffield and Durham have seen annual temperatures rise by up to 1.6C, meaning many UK areas now exceed the 1.5C target for limiting global warming set at the 2015 Paris climate talks.
The finding emerged from research by Ed Hawkins, professor of climate science at Reading University, who traced temperature records from five of Britain’s longest-running weather stations, in Oxford, Durham, Sheffield, Armagh and Stornoway.
He will present the data this week in a lecture at the Royal Society. “Through the 20th century you see more frequent warm years in these towns,” Hawkins said. “It’s a long-term trend and takes off from the 1980s. In 2018 UK temperatures were about 1.6C…
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/11bcc6fe-6922-11e9-b5dd-262daa867e56
10
HMm?… i wonder if anyone will point out that INDIVIDUAL location data cannot be compared to a GLOBAL AVERAGE figure.
But you would not expect such logic from a Professor of Climate science at a University.
Im sure the Royal Society will take the bait though !
10
In other words The Times
Is now Printing garbage
By Climate Phrenologists
20
I went off The Times years ago!
20
Well it did feature in the joke about Christine Keeler’s newspaper subscriptions
00
28 Apr: AFR: Forrest-backed Port Kembla LNG import project gets green light
by Angela Macdonald-Smith
The Andrew Forrest-backed Port Kembla LNG import terminal in NSW has become the first of five competing projects on the south-east coast to get the green light from government, paving the way for it to bring extra gas into the eastern states from late next year.
The NSW government announced approval for the $250 million project on Monday, with Deputy Premier John Barilaro saying it would boost the local economy and help bring down the cost of living across the state.
“This terminal could supply 70 per cent of our state’s annual gas demand and help ease the cost of energy bills for NSW families and small-business owners,” said NSW Energy and Environment Minister Matt Kean…
Australia is considering importing gas even as it has become one of the world’s biggest liquefied natural gas exporters…
AGL Energy is still going through the approvals process for its LNG import project proposed for Crib Point in Victoria, while import ventures are also being studied by ExxonMobil in Victoria, by Korea’s EPIK in Newcastle and by Venice Energy in South Australia.
https://www.afr.com/business/energy/forrest-backed-port-kembla-lng-import-project-gets-green-light-20190429-p51i38
00
The ABC thinks it’s a great thing to import Natural gas , and maybe even build a gas fired power plant but the question remains – Why ?
NSW should have ample supplies of natural gas or have they banned extraction like Victoriastan?
10
RR there is good logic for importing LNG – Australian coastal shipping rates are horrendous. It is cheaper to buy and freight bulk commodities such as refined petroleum and LNG from Singapore, just to our north, than to ship it direct from WA to NSW.
Tas makes great beer we can’t buy in the Nth Island because the maritime unions control that little bit of water between us.
10
Sydney’s mostest worstest end-of-the-world manic Monday EVAH? Sydney Airport’s IT system crashed, city trains down, a restaurant burns, a car burns, “POOR” air quality alerts issued… all because someone almost achieved nirvana / enlightenment the day before when their 97%-approved eZee-Explode battery hit critical Orange-Flash-Man stage?
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-04-29/sydney-morning-briefing-monday-april-29/11052778
Meanwhile down at the beach, “Hazardous Surf Warning for New South Wales” via a big grunty southerly which is now dumping bucket-loads of fresh white onto our Southern Alps. Roundhill, Lake Tekapo, Mackenzie Basin: 50 cm snow to 800 metres, max -2˚C, webcams plastered/buried in whiteout conditions. No XR lushes in loin-cloths were seen anywhere, not even gluing themselves to the cafeteria door or a T-bar pylon. Then again, maybe they were hiding in the outside long-drops, sheltering from the -14˚C wind chill and blowing snow…
https://www.metservice.com/skifields/roundhill
Just another
manicmagic Monday.41
Is it going to be an early ski season, then?
00
… well, early-ish …
00
Lovely view of snow-clad Aspiring / Tititea at 1 pm today, Tuesday. Scroll down to view other ski area webcams. Nothing unusual about April cold snaps dumping fresh snow on the hills, same as it ever was, uh, except back in the Eocene when Otago was a tropical swamp with crocs and turtles and palm trees and… and then something changed.
https://www.snow-forecast.com/resorts/Mount-Aspiring/webcams/latest
Here’s hoping for an epic winter, similar to Europe and North America’s massive dumps, as I shouted myself a season’s pass this year 🙂
00
Sky Australia now having endless spruiking by Matt Wenham from Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering for electric cars – they’ve put out a report, saying it’s EVs are great, and we are fools if we don’t all have them.
story is behind paywall at newscorp papers.
following links to 98-page report PDF, titled “Shifting gears – preparing for a transport revolution”:
29 Apr: TheDriveN: Australia must act now to accelerate electric vehicle uptake: report
by Bridie Schmidt
A national target and policies aimed at accelerating the uptake of electric vehicles is key if Australia is to avoid being left behind in the slow lane, a new report funded by the Australian federal government’s Australian Research Council (ARC) says.
Australians will suffer if adequate preparation is not made for the technological disruption of transport, risking a significant decline in quality of life, productivity and health compared to the rest of the developed world, the report (LINK) says…
Conducted by the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering as part of a three-year-study on readiness for new and emerging technologies for the ARC’s Learned Academies Special Projects, the report identifies three core challenges that it says must be addressed if Australia’s transport sector is to keep up with the rest of the developed world.
Academy Fellow Drew Clarke, who co-chaired the report, said in a note by email that: “The Academy has identified sustainability and climate change, productivity, and health as the three key challenges that will need to be addressed within the transport sector over the next decade.
“Specifically, the transport sector will need to lower emissions, improve the efficient movement of people and freight, and reduce transport-related deaths and serious injuries.
“The deployment of connected autonomous vehicles, low and zero-emission vehicles, high-frequency mass transport and intelligent transport systems are potential solutions to these challenges.”
With climate change a central focus in next month’s upcoming federal election, electric vehicles have been in the limelight with the Labor opposition proposing that 50% of new car sales should be electric by 2030…READ ON
https://thedriven.io/2019/04/29/australia-must-act-now-to-accelerate-electric-vehicle-uptake-report/
Wikipedia: Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering
The Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering is an independent thinktank that helps Australians understand and use technology to solve complex problems. It was founded in 1975 as one of Australia’s four learned Academies…
List of presidents
Dr Alan Finkel AO FAA FTSE 2013–2015
Fellowship:
Royal Fellow: The Academy inducted its Royal Fellow, HRH Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh KG KT OM GBE AC PC FRS FAA FTSE, in 1977.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Academy_of_Technology_and_Engineering
00
This shows just how unbiased Sky really is , not sure you’re going to get an anti Ev critic getting air time on the ABC .
This is why I watch Sky , it has balance .
12
A political ad on the radio today, was about the abolishing the luxury car tax. Makes me wonder whether EVs over the threshold would attract the luxury car tax, or whether there would be an exemption
10
There is already a different trigger level for “fuel efficient vehicles” vs others. In the usual Greenie style you can bet a total exemption will be sort as most EVs are pushing to boundary. Even the new E Kona only just scrapes in. Teslas are way over.
10
Just think, on your next plane flight that happens to use a 787, there is a rather large Lithium battery down the back. The might of the world science and engineering community, together with the Boeing Company, can think of no better way to protect you from it than to put it in a steel box that should take longer to burn through than it will for you to get on the ground and evacuate. Fumes are supposed to vent to atmosphere.
The angle of attack sensors on the 737 MAX are supposed to work also.
I used to enjoy flying.
30
Just choose Airbus! The A380 is quiet, comfortable and, what is more, has four engines, not just two. 🙂
30
And very conveniently there are a lot of A380’s flying between Heathrow (England) and Melbourne (Australia)!
I do like the 4 engine philosophy. Years ago I read a book called “Song of the Sky” by Guy Murchie. It is probably out of print now.
He wrote in the 1950’s when DC4’s, Constellation’s etc provided most of the Air Transport. His message was 4 engines is best! Two engines means not enough reserve if one fails, and 3 engines was not practical in the propeller Era.
I think that is still good today. The 3 engine jet did ok but failed on some practicalities (mainly the inability to upgrade as better engines came along).
10
DC 10’s seemed to have trouble with mountains …
00
4 engine safety philosophy is outdated considering today’s ultrareliable jet engines. Piston engines are no match in reliability compared to jets. Anyhow 4 engines use is only due to the size of the aircraft, to get the power required. Two engines are cheaper to maintain and operate than four. Most two engine aircraft is today bigger than the 4 engine 707. The 747 is falling out of favour as a passenger plane because of having four engines and the same issue with the 380.
00
I believe the A380 is being discontinued in 2021 because of lack of orders. Of course, the existing A380s will continue to be flown for many years to come.
00
Ah if it was only that simple. Depending on destinations and connections options can be limited and aircraft can be changed in any case. Worth adding to the list whe looking at flights though to at least not deliberately design in a 787 flight.
10
When the 737 Max is recertified it will be as safe as the 737 NG. That said the Max is “a bridge too far” in the 737 family.
Boeing have been using all it’s after tax profits buying back stock, which is wonderful for the board members because they get bonuses based on share price so they spent no money on R&D developing a new aircraft from scratch. It’s not as if this is their first OOPS moment. The USAF has refused acceptance of new aerial tankers subject rectification, the 787 was late in delivery because of Li Ion battery problems and a search will uncover quality control problems, as it would earlier 737s.
30
A butterfly beating it’s wings in Siberia………
Going back to basics, the reason MCAS had to be fitted to the Max is because the landing gear is too short. WHAT!
The original 737 used straight turbo jet engines, or so it looks here:
https://airwaysmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/VMU-Edwards-AFB-Sept.-1967-P41953-680x365_c.jpg [note how much the plane has been extended]
anyway they are much smaller diameter than today’s high bypass fan jets.
The NG was the first design to discover that the aircraft was too low to the ground:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKtvAWxjF4k
The Max was more powerful, more efficient ergo larger diameter still. THAT problem could not be solved by flattening the nacelle further so it had to be fitted higher which necessitated it being further forward thus changing the flight characteristics to such a degree that A/ Flight training would be needed with a new type rating or B/ They do an el cheapo mod that hid the change from the pilots and airlines so no training or new rating was needed. The choice a no-brainer. 🙁
00
By the time any new aircraft reaches prototype stage the manufacturer is too heavily invested to walk away from a flawed design.
I’m old enough to remember the bad record of the B 727. A quick search found this:
On August 16, 1965 United Air Lines Flight 389 plunged into Lake Michigan while descending for landing at O’Hare. On November 8, 1965, American Airlines Flight 383, crashed during its approach to Greater Cincinnati airport, killing 62 of 66 passengers and crew on board. Three days later, United Air Lines Flight 227 crashed on landing at Salt Lake City International Airport, killing 43 of 91 aboard. And on February 4, 1966, an All Nippon Airways 727 crashed into the sea on approach to Haneda Airport at Tokyo.
The DC 9, with similar configuration of engines at the tail didn’t fare much better as I recall. In fact I doubt any aircraft with that engine configuration had stellar safety records, for a variety of reasons including the fact that the engines and control lines/hydraulics were packed too close together if an engine shattered.
Airbus looks to have moved to composites in construction well though. I do not know of one crash caused by their failure even though they have been flying for many years.
Airbus wins!
10
The comments about the B727 and DC9 are rubbish. They were both great aircraft and most accidents involving them were caused by pilot error. I have thousands of hours flying both of them
00
Pilot error by crews not well trained in the new configuration? Sound familiar?
Engine failures certainly brought down A/C through loss of control.
00
NYDailyNews reporting Jun 25th 2009 …
The Telegraph on the AF447 tragedy on April 28 2012 prior to the release of the accident report, said: Airbus’s ‘brilliant’ aircraft design may have contributed to one of the world’s worst aviation disasters and the deaths of all 228 onboard … .
It seemed to be a control/sensor problem similar to Boeing’s Max one. (I haven’t read it thoroughly.)
00
Congrats on your segment on the Bolt report Jo , nailed it .
60
Thank you! Bit late with todays post after that short notice appearance. In curious trivia it was from the same building as the ungreat debate. — Jo
10
Polling Started today for the Federal Election.
I went to a booth and there were a lot of people voting! They are over it. They don’t want to listen to Morrison/Shorten debates. They already know how they want to vote.
Unfortunately: Not much for the Australian Conservatives as far as I could judge.
30
LEADERS DEBATE
I watched part of the Leaders debate. Unfortunatley I did not see all of it.
I thought Bill Shorten did quite well overall, given his party position.
Morrison was patchy. He was hopeless on Climate Change, The Economy, and Taxation of dividends.
He was quite good on Illegal Immigration.
He got hopelessly lost on a debate about electric cars.
I hope that Jo will open this up tomorrow for a debate!
40
According to the audience Shorten wins 25 /12 with 11 undecided.
Suspect the Clive Palmer / PHON stuff is not going to turn out well for ScoMo.
Waiting to see what Poorline comes up with to try and get attention back on her not Clive.
13
ABC Audience response is of little interest or prediction.
You could be right about Palmer, Hansen and Anning response to Scomo.
Whatever their response might be it will not be featured on the ABC.
We will have to look elsewhere.
11
It wasn’t an ABC audience.
It was one selected by the organizers, the West Australian, that notoriously right wing rag. 🙂
13
Au contraire. Clive Palmer may sink Shorten.
10
‘Poorline’
** chuckle **
10
Hopefully this link works.. A German study has just been released demonstrating that EV’s emit more carbon dioxide than an equivalent Diesel powered car.
40
Sigh, It didn’t..try again
http://brusselstimes.com/business/technology/15050/electric-vehicles-emit-more-co2-than-diesel-ones,-german-study-shows
10
***Coalition criticism that EVs cost more? ABC’s usual, deceptive way of narrowing criticism that is general in nature:
29 Apr: ABC: Scott Morrison and Bill Shorten battle over taxes, electric cars and climate change
By political reporter Brett Worthington
Mr Shorten accused Mr Morrison and the Coalition of not believing in climate change let alone doing anything about it…
The Prime Minister insisted no-one on his side of politics was disputing climate change existed.
He said the Coalition’s 2030 emissions target would cost $3.5 billion and wanted Labor to clarify how much its policy would cost…
Labor wants 50 per cent of all new car sales to be electric vehicles by 2030.
That policy has attracted ***Coalition criticism that it would force Australians to pay more for vehicles.
The policy provided an awkward exchange between the two leaders when Mr Shorten was asked how much a popular electric vehicle cost.
Mr Shorten: “I haven’t bought a new car in a while so I couldn’t tell you.”
Mr Morrison: “I can tell you how much [more an] electric car costs than a standard car, it’s $28,000. It’s $28,000 [more] for the same type of car.”
Mr Shorten: “Well that’s great we’ve got a Prime Minister spending his time in the motor pages. That’s great.”
Mr Morrison: “Well that’s where most Australians spend their time, mate.”…
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-04-29/scott-morrison-bill-shorten-prime-minister-debate-perth/11056314
28 Apr: UK Sun: TREVOR KAVANAGH: Tories are lost and could become extinct in this climate of hysteria and cannot defend themselves
Claims made by the Extinction Rebellion protesters are simplistic and at times false
THE Tories are facing extinction – without even the pleasure of a rebellion.
Having beaten themselves to a pulp over Brexit, they are now too punch-drunk to defend themselves over global warming…
There is a solution to our looming energy crisis — cheap, clean shale gas. But feeble Energy Secretary Greg Clark threw it away, forcing fracking tsar Natascha Engel to quit yesterday in disgust.
After nine dithering years in power, with no idea how to keep the lights on, this Government is damned now whichever way it jumps.
Protesters claiming “The End Is Nigh” are swarming like angry wasps.
Their claims may be simplistic and sometimes false, but they have been nailed on Netflix by national treasure Sir David Attenborough and hammered home by Swedish schoolgirl Greta Thunberg…
Jezza is using these crowd-pullers to turn dull carbon emissions into a glittering crusade — a national emergency no less.
His Momentum Marxists are tutoring the Extinction Rebellion protesters who gridlocked London and turned 16-year-old Greta into a global warming superstar. The Tories have nothing to say…
(Natascha) Engel’s walk-out should surprise nobody. I received a frantic call from the ex-Labour MP weeks ago warning about “nonsense” rules which stop fracking at the slightest tremor.
She told me: “This is a real threat to the industry and means buying more Russian gas.” Her argument doesn’t wash with Jezza’s anti-capitalist anarchists, Greta or Blue Planet’s Sir David, who between them now run UK energy policy…
Jezza’s much brighter brother Piers deserves a final say on this sudden burst of mass hysteria and Greta worship.
“Listening to an ignorant, brainwashed child is deranged,” he tweets. “I am an actual scientist of physics, meteorology, astrophysics and climate and say Greta Thunberg is wrong.”
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/8959566/tories-lost-extinct-climate-hysteria-trevor-kavanagh/
How Greta Thunberg can force more action on climate change
Financial Times-8 hours ago
00
no doubt:
29 Apr: RenewEconomy: Australia can be powered 100% by renewables by early 2030s, says Garnaut
by Giles Parkinson
In the third of a series of six public lectures being delivered by Garnaut in the lead up to the next election, Garnaut says a grid powered by wind and solar, and backed by storage and demand management, could be achieve quite quickly, but it would require the “train wreck” of regulatory failures to be fixed.
“I now have no doubt that intermittent renewables could meet 100 per cent of Australia’s electricity requirements by the 2030s, with high degrees of security and reliability, and at wholesale prices much lower than any experienced in Australia over the past decade,” Garnaut says in his talk last week at the University of Melbourne (a video of which can be seen here)(LINK).
“More importantly, I now have no doubt that with well designed policy support, firm power in globally transformative quantities could be supplied to industrial locations in each State at globally competitive prices.
“That is around $45 to $50 per MWh today, whenever the power is required. No other developed country has a comparable opportunity…
Garnaut notes that solar was significantly more expensive than coal a decade ago, it is now cheaper than just the operating costs of coal.
Further falls in the cost of solar, to around $30/MWh by 2025, and further rises in the operating costs of coal, would mean it would make no sense to make new investments in coal generation from now on. Even with firming and storage, solar and wind beat fossil fuels, as the CSIRO and the Australian Energy market Operator have recognised…
These next two graphs illustrate how…
https://reneweconomy.com.au/australia-can-be-powered-100-by-renewables-by-early-2030s-says-garnaut-16846/
20
Another economist who knows best what we should do re. science and technology. Sarc/ who’d a thunk it?
20
Ross Garnaut is a member of the Trilateral Commission, the organisation that instigated the 1983 United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development, the Gro Harlem Brundtland Commission, that first introduced the term ‘sustainable development’ and promoted the fear of climate armageddon from human caused global warming. It’s endorsing a new globalist world order, with UN controlled pervasive bureaucratic control of all natural resources, institutions and us. (Agenda 21). And of course that political organisation posing as a scientific body, the IPCC, is a UN TC love child also. https://www.desmogblog.com/donna-laframboise
Interesting fact. In the US, from its first Trilateral Commission – promoted – president, Jimmy Carter, every administration since, except for Donald Trumps’, has had a Trilateral member as President, or Vice President, or both. Lots of reps in World Bank too. Just saying, what’s behind the green door. Garnaut is there, along with George Soros and a coterie of other Trilaterals.
30
Be needing lots of imported minerals and imported hardware for this energy transformation. “Transitional” diesel could get suddenly expensive on the way to final green Nirvana, not to mention the failure to invest in “transitional” coal which will be expected to slave away regardless. (Fortunately the manufacturers in Asia of wind and solar contraptions have plenty of Australian coal to burn and Australia has lots of debt trap money to burn.)
We know a bit about standards here in Oz. Perhaps Ross Garnaut could talk a little about mining and environmental damage in the New Guinea/South Pacific Region? He has certain experience there. Some might say he has form.
I’m with Macbeth on Big Green and its plutocrat gurus:
And be these juggling fiends no more believed,
That palter with us in a double sense,
That keep the word of promise to our ear,
And break it to our hope.
20
29 Apr: AFR: APRA warns climate uncertainty ‘no excuse for inaction’
by James Fernyhough
The warning came in a new report in which the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority rates the sectors it regulates on their actions to address the risks posed by climate change.
The paper gives the industry a broadly positive review, with general insurers, banks and super funds doing particularly well. However life insurers and private health funds were singled out as the laggards among APRA-regulated firms.
It also found only a minority of companies – about one in five – were meeting voluntary climate risk disclosure targets set out by the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures, an international private sector initiative chaired by US billionaire Michael Bloomberg that includes many of the world’s biggest financial institutions.
“Climate change and society’s responses to it are now widely recognised as foundational drivers of risk and opportunity within the global economy,” the report stated, adding this had “implications for APRA’s mandate to protect the Australian community” by ensuring companies were addressing the risks.
“APRA has advised regulated entities that, while the implications of a changing climate will have a long-term impact and the time horizon for the risks can be uncertain, this does not justify inaction. There is a high degree of certainty that financial risks will materialise, and entities can mitigate the magnitude of the impacts of these risks through action in the short-term.”…
APRA also asked about the opportunities of climate change, with respondents citing product opportunities – including low carbon products and services – and investment opportunities, particularly in renewables and green bonds.
APRA’s increased focus on climate change is backed up by fellow regulators the Australian Securities and Investments Commission and the Reserve Bank of Australia…
https://www.afr.com/business/banking-and-finance/apra-warns-climate-uncertainty-no-excuse-for-inaction-20190428-p51hww
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to be welcomed by the Bank and the journos:
29 Apr: CityAM UK: Climate change protesters to target Bank of England on Thursday with ‘green QE’ demands
by Harry Robertson
Climate change protesters have announced that they will target the City’s Bank of England on Thursday, with demands that future stimulus bond buying is done with green goals in mind.
The protests, organised by campaign groups Positive Money and Fossil Free London, will take place at the Bank on the day it releases its inflation report, and comes after weeks of climate protests in London by Extinction Rebellion…
The two groups will demand the Bank of England “greens” its quantitative easing (QE) programme, which means stopping asset purchases in high-carbon sectors and favouring bonds which fund green projects.
They will also say the Bank should use its regulatory power to stop financial firms financing the fossil fuel industry and encourage greater lending to sustainable energy projects.
The activists have said they will arrive outside the Royal Exchange building opposite the Bank for a “photo stunt” and will stay outside until journalists have entered the building to report on the inflation report at around 10am…
“Campaigners want to ensure that future QE will help rather than hinder the green transition,” they said…
http://www.cityam.com/276842/climate-protesters-target-bank-england-thursday-green-qe
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29 Apr: Yahoo: AFP: UN biodiversity conference to lay groundwork for Nature rescue plan
by Marlowe HOOD
Diplomats from 130 nations gathered in Paris on Monday to validate a grim UN assessment of the state of Nature and lay the groundwork for a rescue plan for life on Earth.
The destruction of Nature threatens humanity “at least as much as human-induced climate change,” UN biodiversity chief Robert Watson said as the five-day meeting began.
“We have a closing window of opportunity to act and narrowing options.”
A 44-page draft “Summary for Policy Makers” obtained by AFP catalogues the 1001 ways in which our species has plundered the planet and damaged its capacity to renew the resources upon which we depend, starting with breathable air, drinkable water and productive soil.
The impact of humanity’s expanding footprint and appetites has been devastating.
Up to a million species face extinction, many within decades, according to the report, and three-quarters of Earth’s land surface has been “severely altered”.
A third of ocean fish stocks are in decline, and the rest, barring a few, are harvested at the very edge of sustainability.
A dramatic die-off of pollinating insects, especially bees, threatens essential crops valued at half-a-trillion dollars annually…
Based on an underlying report that draws from 400 experts and weighs in at 1,800 pages, the executive summary has to be vetted line-by-line by diplomats, with scientists at their elbow.
The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) document, once approved, will be released on May 6.
Historically, conservation biology has focused on the plight of pandas, polar bears and a multitude of less “charismatic” animals and plants that humanity is harvesting, eating, crowding or poisoning into oblivion.
But in the last two decades, that focus has shifted back to us.
“Up to now, we have talked about the importance of biodiversity mostly from an environmental perspective,” Watson told AFP ahead of the Paris meet…
“Now we are saying that Nature is crucial for food production, for pure water, for medicines and even social cohesion.”
And to fight climate change…
https://au.news.yahoo.com/un-report-highlight-urgent-nature-rescue-plan-030810951–spt.html
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29 Apr: Gizmodo: The Dirty Truth About Green Batteries
by Maddie Stone
Making that future a reality will, among other things, require a lot of batteries: batteries to charge our electric cars; batteries to store solar power collected while the sun’s up and wind power harnessed when it’s gusty out. But as a new report by researchers at the University of Technology Sydney warns, that’s likely to drive demand for the metals used to build green batteries—as well as wind turbines and solar panels—through the roof.
In other words the clean tech boom is, at least in the short term, likely to fuel a mining boom. And that won’t come without cost.
“We already know about the environmental, social, and human rights impacts extraction is posing to front line communities right now,” Payal Sampat, mining program director at Earthworks, which commissioned the new report, told Earther. “It’s kind of unimaginable to think about… how it would be considered sustainable to scale up those impacts that many fold and still be reaping benefits.”…
While that basic fact has been known for years, the new report takes things a step further by working out the projected demand for 14 critical metals if humanity were to limit global warming to the Paris Agreement target of 1.5 degrees Celsius, by shifting to 100 per cent renewable energy by mid-century. In a scenario the authors describe “very ambitious”, the 2050 energy mix is mainly wind and solar PV-driven, with smaller fractions of our energy coming from geothermal power, hydropower, and other technologies. The transportation sector is also 100 per cent renewable, with over half of all cars, buses, and commercial vehicles being battery-driven electric or plug-in hybrids.
That future sounds great from a climate perspective. But as the new analysis shows, it also creates some daunting materials challenges.
In the authors’ scenarios, annual demand for lithium, as well as the rare earths neodymium and dysprosium, for batteries and EV engines, exceed current production rates by 2022. Batteries will also drive cobalt and nickel demand higher than current production around 2030, while tellurium demand for solar PV will peak well above current production rates in the late 2020s to mid 2030s.
It gets worse. By mid-century, even in the most optimistic scenarios, the battery sector’s cobalt appetite is projected to exceed known planetary reserves, while our lithium demand will have eaten up at least 86 per cent of known reserves…
https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2019/04/the-dirty-truth-about-green-batteries/
16 Apr: UTS: Responsible minerals sourcing for renewable energy
Download the full report (pdf, 61 pages, 17.9MB)
https://www.uts.edu.au/research-and-teaching/our-research/institute-sustainable-futures/our-research/resource-futures/responsible-minerals-for-renewable-energy
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Only yesterday night an electrical car burned out spontaneously while parked in the city of Brussels. Firemen had to put the car in a water container to evacuate it safely. If you read french you can see the local newspaper article here
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Enthusiasts for ‘green’ technologies all have one giant blind spot and it’s this:
Technical feasibility does NOT equal economic viability.
More than most countries, Australias’ economy depends on fairly ubiquitous access to personal motorised transport, particularly cars. And for that economic model to work for anything longer than the short-term, it must be economically viable. In other words, it must function without subsidies. Renewables have their place, but they won’t go mainstream until fossil energy becomes uneconomic due to depletion.
Cheers!
Paul
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I was spooked by this blog-post. For the past year, I have charged my e-bike battery in my home office. Invariably, while it is charging, I am sitting a metre away from it.
On occasion, I have left it on charge overnight.
As of yesterday, my bike battery is now stored with the bike in the shed. I charge the battery outside when I arrive home, and then again before I go out the next day.
Thanks, Jo, and everyone who commented, for alerting me to the danger of Lithium batteries.
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I can’t imagine a more fun daily routine than sitting and watching my batteries charge.
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