onetrack

I've often thought about the multiple hundreds of open pit mines in W.A. that could be used for pumped energy storage. Many of these abandoned pits are full of water, and many are 200-500M deep. In addition, they usually have a huge waste material dump adjoining the pit, adding to the height discrepancy between the pit, and the top of the waste dump. Surely, these sites are ideal for pumped hydro? It would generally take little to add a link to the main power grid, to deliver the power generated, as the grid is often within reasonable reach of the open pits.

Seasons Greetings to all the forum members and their families, and I trust the wind and weather conditions change for the better for you, Nev, and the danger of losing your house disappears. I've lost my house in a fire, it is devastating, but at least approaching bushfires give you some time to prepare. In my case, my house burnt to the ground during the day with an electrical fault, and when I wasn't home. But at the end of the day, all material possessions can be replaced, your life and family members lives can't, so keep safe.

In the far-flung regional areas of W.A., the rural powerlines to outlying areas were becoming a major cost burden to Western Power, the local energy supplier and maintainer of the grid. Quite a number of marginal farms suffered from excessive amounts of blackouts due to powerline damage by storms and long waits for crews to arrive to fix the damage. So Western Power decided to pull down those remote powerlines and replace them with on-site, stand-alone power generation facilities. The setup is solar panels, batteries and a backup diesel generator. The arrangement has vastly improved the amount of power available to the farms, and reduced blackouts to a bare minimum for them. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-10-02/thousands-of-renewable-standalone-power-systems-to-be-rolled-out/101479136

A dog owner in Ukraine thought he'd see how his dog would react, to him being attacked by strangers. The result is not what he expected! https://nevsedoma.com.ua/en/684120-a-dogs-reaction-to-an-attack-by-strangers-on-its-owner.html

I can't handle fiction, I get handed too many fictional stories nearly every day in normal dealings with people. I do like adventure books, especially the exploits of people during wartime. I got given a book titled "Great South Land" by Rob Mundle last Christmas. I was a bit reluctant to start on it, but when I did a few months later, I was quite surprised at how entertaining and informative the book was. It's all about the early seafaring explorers looking for the Great South Land in the 16th and 17th centuries, and how the Dutch seafarers Janzsoon, Hartog and Tasman - and William Dampier - who was a pirate, no less - actually contributed a lot to knowledge about Australia, long before Capt Cook took all the honours and glory for "finding" Australia. Mundle is especially admiring of William Dampier, who was an extremely observant man, who also recorded vast amounts of what he saw and experienced. Dampier recorded in detail, winds, currents, tides, flora and fauna, and also recorded the inhabitants of many places - including NW Australia. He wrote at least two books, but a lot of his journals and written information was lost when his ship at the time, the Roebuck, was lost at Ascension Island, due to worm-eaten planking. Capt James Cook utilised a lot of Dampiers accurately-recorded information, from Dampiers book, "A New Voyage Around the World", to assist in his exploration and claiming of Australia for the British Crown in 1770. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Dampier

But do you have the right size tool to fit that 10mm female socket?

Ooops, I must get a new keyboard, the letters are worn off this one.

Wearing things will get you thrown off any worksite, even public auction sites! See "site access" below! https://www.grays.com/sale/7053302/mechanical-workshops/mossman-mill-no-reserve-liquidation-engineering?tab=Inspection+&+Collection=&srsltid=AfmBOopnZZqECN_04xF7_gBg2AcdTlI54jjNHe68BzXVrD4SQN-Dnsd4

So .... does this mean you become a fugitive, if you release a fart in a miners cage?

Utilise smaller plates with smaller portions on them, and avoid entrees and desserts.

It can't be a genuine sign, there's no penalty for farting listed. 😄

It's called a portable diesel generator, when you want backup. The local electrical suppliers use them now for power backups when transformers fail. It's when the backups fail, that the ordure really hits the rotating blades. We had an episode like this when the main Muja (Collie, W.A.) to Kalgoorlie HV transmission line suffered severe damage from a major storm in January 2023. Five large HV pylons fell over during the storm - then the two gas turbine backup generators in Kalgoorlie failed to come on-line during the outage. It took them several days to track down the backup generator problem - and it was simply a problem that no electrical designer had envisaged - zero voltage in the Muja-Kalgoorlie line. The backup generators were designed to actuate with residual voltage in the grid - but there was no residual voltage, so they couldn't crank up. It took about 4 days to track down the problem and bring the gas turbines online, and it took nine days to restore the Muja-Kalgoorlie line. https://www.westernpower.com.au/news/storm-destroyed-transmission-line-rebuilt-and-re-energised/#:~:text=Five towers were destroyed by,owned generator during the rebuild.

American culture is all-pervasive and has infiltrated every country in the world where they've rolled up. They even built a town here in Australia, using all American building standards, power standards (110V power station), and even imported a sizeable number of LHD cars, so they wouldn't be forced to drive those dreadful RHD cars! That town is called Exmouth and if you were silly enough to buy an ex-U.S. Navy-built house in Exmouth, you'll find nothing made to Australian Standards fits! The doors are all 3 feet wide (to accommodate lots of portly Americans, I suppose), the windows are also oddball dimensions, all household fittings, wiring and plumbing is U.S.-made materials, and even the cladding for walls and roof is unknown in Australia! Some of the Americans sold their LHD cars locally when they returned to the U.S., and made a financial killing.

The W.A. Govt is charging ahead and investing in large storage ("grid-scale") batteries, as fast as the manufacturers can supply them, and as fast as State budgeting will allow. https://www.wa.gov.au/organisation/energy-policy-wa/energy-storage https://www.synergy.net.au/Our-energy/SynergyRED/Large-Scale-Battery-Energy-Storage-Systems

The first 7 years after I left school and living in the city, were spent living in a rented farmhouse in the wheatbelt, where we only had 32V power. We had a stack of 2V lead-acid batteries and a 32V generator run by a single-cylinder, hand cranked, YB model Southern Cross diesel engine. It was no fun cranking up that engine on cold Winter mornings! There was a brass cup inserted upside down into the rocker cover, you filled this brass cup with oil and poured it into the orifice, and the oil ran into the intake and assisted in cold starting. The decompression device was a pin that went under the inlet valve and held it open, and which pin was operated by a lever and rod assembly, which was actuated by turning a pipe sleeve that rotated on the cooling water intake pipe. So you filled the old YB with oil, rotated the sleeve as you slowly cranked the engine, until the inlet valve was held open, then you picked up cranking speed until it felt like your arm would fall off, and then you rotated the decompression sleeve to close the intake valve, and hopefully, she'd fire up! Cold mornings with frost on the ground and thick oil made this a "short straw" job!! The engine was built in the Toowoomba Foundry and I was surprised to see Southern Cross built over 14,000 of them! They were the days when we built good stuff in Australia, designed by Australians! We had also Dunlite Wind Generators, too, they were quite advanced for their time, and large numbers were exported, even to places such as Canada and the U.S.

Michael Leunig, one of Australia's finest cartoonists and poets, has passed away, aged 79. Mr Curly and his ducks have gone home for good. I had the pleasure of going to one of his talks in Perth about 20-odd years ago, he was a gentle soul, and a great observer of human nature. He was declared a National living treasure by the National Trust in 1999. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-12-19/australian-cartoonist-michael-leunig-dies/104748614

I got confused for a moment between this John Marsden, and the other John Marsden, the highly promiscuous and abrasive gay lawyer, who's been dead for years.

After further investigation, it appears, yes, you must have electrical installations installed by a licenced electrician, even if they are completely independent of the grid. Australian/NZ Standards apply, and some States have specific requirements that depart from the AS/NZ Standards or override them. There are distinctions between Extra Low Voltage (ELV), Low Voltage (LV) and High Voltage (HV) installations. Even ELV installations require licenced electrical installer oversight. The only exception is 12V and 24V DC wiring.

Willie messaged me, he's just fine, he just cut back on computer time to concentrate on his driveway repairs and other jobs. Oh, course, he's also purchased a couple more trailers to cart stuff around with! 😄

I just had a random thought on Monday evening as I was returning from the Wheatbelt to the City, and driving South down the Tonkin Highway past Ellenbrook, looking at a huge golden sun setting. As I watched the sun sink, I counted up and realised 27,588 sunsets have gone down, since the day I first drew breath. That's a lot of sunsets. I've missed a fair few of them, for various reasons, but I've also seen some pearlers. This is one I took a photo of, in July 2019 - on the coast at Gnaraloo Station in W.A.

It's been a fair while since Williedoo posted. I trust he's O.K.? Maybe he's got caught up with rebuilding his convoluted driveway with all the free giveaways he's been acquiring?

If you set up your own stand-alone electrical system, without any connection to the grid, does it still have to be installed by a licenced electrician?

It was a turbine turning tool manufactured from nylon, especially designed to not cause engine component damage. The maintenance failure was simply one of slack accountability for tools. The advice to leave the tool in the engine intake for the incoming shift was totally wrong, and interfered with tool accountability, which should be paramount at all times. The tool was entrusted to one LAME, and it should've been returned to the tool-issuing dept at the end of the LAME's shift, even if it was immediately required again by the incoming shift. https://www.theregister.com/2024/11/15/tool_found_in_a380_engine/

I'm not buying an EV for at least 3 years, because in 3 years time, the current crop of EV's will look like Model T Fords, such is the rapid pace of EV development.