However, this is not a simple swamp cooler - it's a ground heat sink system powered by natural convection.
If it were just a swamp cooler - yes. I have experimented with pure swamp coolers and they're not very effective near a sea.
When a wind tower is integrated with a quanat system, it works even in humid.
The key is drawing in air through underground passages - either irrigation channels or just cellars. The ground acts as a cold store (heat sink), cooling incoming air before it enters the house.
The tower + wind catcher has no thermal role - it must simply create low pressure and keep the draft going.
Or a solar concentrator and a steam / Stirling motor.
Alternatively, you lay them out in north-south rows (like a fence) and they generate most power during morning and evening, when sunshine comes from east and west.
Coincidentally, their power maximum is when conventional solar parks are not yet producing or no longer producing.
Coincidentally, this also matches the ideal agrivoltaic setup, where you use almost zero surface (the panels are vertical) and grow plants between, not below solar panels.
I haven't seen that variation of a dish-washing poster. I wish I knew, but nope.
It's from CrimethInc, you can find it here. :)
The squatters' perspective from 2009:
- in summer, dirty dishes are stacked outside the house, weekly meetings discuss the problem, but it's a hard one
- in winter, you wash dishes with liquid ice because the house has an energy shortage
A negative price is almost always walled on both ends by solid positive prices. And a negative price does not mean a negative transmission fee. The price of producing electricity and the price of delivering it are separate things, at least in Europe. You'd still pay a little to the grid operator (who is typically forbidden from being an energy producer, except in emergencies) to receive the surplus energy.
Over here, negative prices typically happen when the weekend (industry is resting) is both sunny and windy.
During weekdays and nights, prices quickly turn positive again.
I would describe it as an incentive to store energy. If a storage plant has capacity, it will be pumping water uphill, charging batteries, heating a thermal store or making hydrogen / methane / whatever it makes (alas, there are very few such plants here). It will continue until there are many, so they can absorb the surplus.
Until then, consumers charge their cars (alas, only 1% of cars) and heat their sauna when it happens.
Cars aren't going anywhere. Achieveing a 20% reduction would be great, but people in developing countries are only now getting started with cars. The only choice: what kind of cars?
Public transport is good, the nearest city to where I live has free public transport (Tallinn, capital of Estonia) but people still use cars. Public transport cannot get everywhere.
I propose a few test cases: try transporting someone old and frail, or a sick child or pet. Go by public transport, walk 10 minutes to the stop, switch lines, wait, walk 5 minutes to the hospital / clinic. If the old person tires, you can't carry them. Now try the same route with 20 cm of snow on ground. Now try with ice on ground. Now try in a storm. If you have a car, you'll be starting it up (if you don't, you'll be asking a friend or hiring a cab).
The question will be "which type of car", "whose car" and "how often".
Also, there will always be people working in the other end of the city, or in the countryside (where cars are practically required since public transport may be miles and hours away). People often have to decide whether to move near their job or move near their relatives (moving is an big hassle, it is not always possible to sell / buy / rent when needed, property prices differ, moving into a rich neighbourhood may be unrealistic) or commute. Smarter planning may reduce the flow, but there will be a flow. And industries are hard to integrate into living districts.
I suspect that overall, the heating elements have a detrimental effect for floating bacteria, but no effect on sessile bacteria / biofilms.
They cause circulation, and water is always boiling near the heaters when they're on - like a geothermal vent at the bottom of an ocean. Thus, any bacterium which wants to live as plankton in the tank, must be able to survive boiling - and most don't.
However, if a bacterium attaches itself to the tank walls, it is safe - and most of time, it doesn't disturb me.
I have not noticed convection stirring the sediment. The power involved is not big, it goes up to 3 kilowatts and the tank is 1 cubic meter.
Yep, it's the boat that sunk in May. By now, investigations are finishing up and court cases starting - 9 suspected smugglers have been charged (they overloaded the ship, estimated 750 people on a small fishing vessel, of whom 104 survived)...
...but also, the response of the Greek border guard seems criminally incompetent. They knew of a severely overloaded boat for the whole day, from a Frontex plane, from their own helicopter... they directed two merchant vessels to offer assistance, but didn't start a rescue operation when it would have been feasible.
Later, when it was night already, they sent a patrol boat - not to rescue people, but tow the refugee boat, and apparently the refugee boat capsized while in tow. Only then did they start a rescue operation, but it was night and their night camera was out of order, so they probably blundered around with searchlights and could help some of the victims... of the smugglers' negligence and their own incompetence. Some survivors plainly say "they towed us too fast".
It's a tragedy that the EU lacks a reasonable mechanism of legal entry, the attraction is so great that people risk their lives, and some border guards have become like this...
Thanks for the T-pipe tip, it seems I should try it.
I also use rainwater, but I never drink it - only wash things with it. It goes through 3 filters (fine sieve to remove macroscopic objects, antibacterial coarse filter and fine filter). The collection tank has viewports to check how bad the sediment situation is. Typically the sediment situation is is bad - rainwater is not without nutrients. I use a suction hose with a filter attached to clean the sediment, but do it seldom, so I bring drinking water with a canister.
Since the same tank acts as a short-term thermal store during heating season, it contains stainless steel heating elements at the bottom (excess solar energy gets dumped into the water tank when batteries are full). The heaters go a long way towards keeping it sterile in winter - but in summer, they are off and bacteria can do their things.
A tractor, from waste and winches. :)