J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
On Thu, 2 Apr 2020 at 05:24:26, Paul wrote:
J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
On Wed, 1 Apr 2020 at 04:54:27, Paul wrote:
[]
It would take a pretty large rack of batteries, to
make riding out all power outages possible. A Tesla
powerwall (~$10K magnitude) is one pre-packaged way

(Someone pointed me at a link yesterday to electric Tornados [the
fighter aircraft]. I twigged more or less immediately - no way current
technology could do a fighter, small passenger plane maybe - even before
I got to them having to sometimes fly inverted to make sure the special
USB charging cables ...)
[]
of Powerwalls could handle that. At some point, it
becomes absurd to prop up the PC :-)

Paul
There comes a point where a generator becomes economic. OK, you've
got to have fuel for it, but the energy density ... Though you've
also (assuming you truly want the U of UPS) got to switch over while
you've still got enough power to start it, and a way to instigate that.

This is true.

I hate gas, which is why I don't think in those terms.
(We call it Petrol, of course.)
It's keeping them starting, keeping them running
that bothers me.

You might convince me, if the device ran off natural
gas, as then there'd be no fuel injection scheme,
I'd just have to change the oil (I can do that),
put in a new sparkplug at some point, and that
would make a palatable solution. AFAIK, the
natural gas network stays up during power
failures.

Never thought of that! Yes, it has some reserve capacity (tanks with
heavy lids to keep the pressure up), and probably has non-electric pumps
to do so too.

I can't honestly say I've seen any natural gas infrastructure
in town here. I don't know where the reservoir is, if one
is present. Never seem to have a problem with pressure.

When they have natural gas pumping stations, there's usually
a good deal of clearance around them. A buddy at work, used to
work on stuff like that. And he said, sometimes he'd drive to
a site in his pickup, and there'd be a crater in the ground,
where the pumping station used to be :-) And that's why it's better
not knowing where stuff like that is located. It would have
been interesting, to know where he parked the pickup...
how far away, and how fast he could run.

Paul