There's gunna be a windfarm in my neighbourhood

[onetrack]

Have you seen the size of the foundations in high rise buildings, and done any rough calculations on the tonnage in those foundations? They are huge.

 

The primary aim of high rise foundation calculations is determining the soil type and stability. Any unstable soils require lengthy pilings.

 

The Chinese have made some serious errors in soil stability calculations for a number of their high rise buildings.

 

[nomadpete]

I was just pointing out that windage is simply an engineering consideration for all structures. 

[rgmwa]

7 hours ago, onetrack said:

 

The Chinese have made some serious errors in soil stability calculations for a number of their high rise buildings.

 

They got most of the design right. The building held together pretty well. 

Edited yesterday at 06:24 AM by rgmwa

[Marty_d]

5 hours ago, rgmwa said:

They got most of the design right. The building held together pretty well. 

A bit too well - is that real? Never known bricks to stay together like that.

[rgmwa]

The basic structure is concrete but the bricks held on pretty well. I remember seeing pictures of a block of flats in Japan that toppled over in an earthquake like that with barely any structural damage. The embankment in the China photo seems to have slipped which might have triggered the collapse. 

[onetrack]

Or the disturbed footings caused the embankment landslip? There must be a lot of steel in that building framework, for it to lay there relatively intact, with big bends in it.

[rgmwa]

Could be and it looks pretty wet as well which suggests water had something to do with it too, especially being so close to a canal. Those units further along are probably going for a good price now. 

[old man emu]

Just heard that electricity prices are set to reduce shortly. I heard it on the ABC radio news with a quote from responsible person. 

 

Why? In the report it was said that renewable generation was now at 50% of requirement in South Australia, New South Wales and South-east Queensland. A lot of this has been due to the development of storage batteries. 

 

We've come a very long way in the adoption of renewable generation, haven't we?

[onetrack]

Personally, I think we've only just started in that journey of weaning ourselves off fossil fuels. There will be lots more developments as regards battery chemistry, leading to a wide range of newer and better and longer-lasting batteries - and the methods of renewable power generation can only increase, especially when AI is put to work to find where improvements can be made and where new sources of renewable energy can be acquired. 

[pmccarthy]

That report is a misleading simplification. AEMC projects a 5% fall in the cost of producing electricity over the next five years. However, retail prices could rise by as much as 13% over the next five years due to inflation, network and distribution costs, compliance and investment costs, demand growth, retailer return on investment, and weather volatility.

[onetrack]

"Could" is not "will". Future projections are highly variable at the best of times.

[old man emu]

8 minutes ago, pmccarthy said:

That report is a misleading simplification.

Bugger! Sucked in again. Who can beleive anything that is published? Do you still beleive that it rained at my place last night?

[Siso]

A lot of these news stories quote the wholesale price of electricity which is only the cost of producing. Pretty misleading. It hides the cost of the extras.  Storage, artificial inertia..... which some one has to pay for and is added to the bills. The link below shows someone saying we won't be paying for electricity soon but just the supply charge similar to mobile phone plans.

 

 

[facthunter]

Prices are dropping about 5% Now. except for SA which is up 1% (Less than inflation). Nev

 

[pmccarthy]

I flew a Cherokee over the Liddell power station just after it opened. I can’t believe they just blew it up.