It's fascinating and depressing how despite me being in a different country on the other side of the world to you, if I swap the $ for £, your comment is still accurate based on the current situation in the UK.
I've been inside Dinorwig Pumped Hydro plant back when they were doing tours. They keep the turbines spinning with compressed air to avoid the delay of having to spin up that large metal mass of turbine when they open the water valves.
Yes, the problem is that the changeover moment between 'tons of water moving uphill' and 'tons of water moving downhill' is inviting a serious case of water hammer if not managed properly. Typically it takes about 30 seconds for things to first quiet down and then to allow the flow to reverse. The turbines themselves are already spun up during that interval, either with compressed air or by temporarily using the generators as unloaded motors so they're already synchronized to the grid. The valves are then opened gradually to the point that the generators start leading the phases and hence put power into the grid.
It's fascinating how mechanical all of this is.
When stuff goes wrong with dams they really go wrong:
Standing inside the turbine hall of one of these you can't help but think of the absolutely insane pressure from a water column typically 100's of meters high and half a meter or more across pushing down on a fairly simple valve. Engineering at its finest. To me the big dams are right up there with spaceflight.
Good idea! The AC in my Nissan Leaf uses about 3kw so I assume it'd be about the same in my Corsa. However the Corsa disables auto-start stop and keeps the engine idling whenever the AC is on, negating any fuel savings!
more likely a reference to "lights-out" manufacturing where you have automated a factory to the extent you don't have to provide lighting or HVAC as there are no humans needed in the production area. The robots don't need to see.
I have assumed the same about the gatwick airport shutdown caused by drones in the UK in 2018. Newspapers saying "No culprit ever found" says "results of military exercise are classified" to me...
I didn't know Russia had tested being isolated from the wider internet! I wonder what problems they had during testing? I would have thought there would be many issues given our current globally connected world. I don't think I even know which country some of the 3rd party dependencies of my apps are hosted in!
I assume all that diesel went straight into a generator for electricity? So in your opinion, could the drill rig have added a trailer full of fold out solar panels and battery storage and still functioned? (I know nothing about drilling for gold, just curious)
If you're talking about seasonal storage I would have thought the natural fit would be power-to-gas or power-to-liquid syn-fuels? Absorb all those extra kWh from the sun in summer, store it for 4-8 months and then burn it during the cold, dark winter? Energy storage density higher than gravitational potential energy and less energy leakage than thermal-mass storage due to non-perfect thermal insulators etc?
FWiW I talk about storage liquid gas hydrogen byproducts a lot - I'm in Western Australia, we're putting up small country sized PV farms to power billion tonne per annum mining operations and with no actual "mountains" (although many mesa's) we look to ammonia | methanol and "infinity trains" rather than to hydro dams or gravity stacks, etc.
The GP comment mentioning "Scandanavia" seemed like a good excuse to spitball ideas with mountains - but as outlined they're no easy fix either - you can't just put a big dam anywhere without potential dangers and cold climates have issues with freezing, expansion, contraction, etc.
Where I'm at we're more concerned with overnight power for massive 24/7 continuous operation than with longer nights and less light in winter .. that's simply not a thing here.
I think you may be onto something here. Taking apart old machinery I have often observed that the hardened part of a shaft is worn and has a noticable groove detectable with a fingernail. However the part that rubbed on it is often much, much softer eg a rubber oil seal. My theory is that the much softer material is so soft that microscopic inclusions of something much harder (grit?) are caught in the material and then abrade the harder shaft. Something similar may be occurring in the keys on glass case?
The device the OP puts Tasmoto on from athom.tech can also be ordered for the same price pre-flashed with ESPHome to work with Home Assistant. I have used them with 2500W single-socket loads and been happy with them for a year or so.
For whole house load I'd recommend integrating with whatever smart meter tech your country uses.
For the in-between size loads eg. 32A breakers in a consumer unit I have not found a reliable and cost effective solution yet.
