Proof that software as service/cloud based, will never work for long term ...

[tom66]

The ground does it pretty well.  It's more or less around 12 - 20C all year round, once you go a meter or so below the surface.  That's why ground source heat pumps are such a good idea.

I did read something that suggested if every house had a GSHP, they'd freeze the ground during the winter and then defrost it during the summer (if they used the GSHP for air conditioning too).  That could cause some disruption to structures and tree roots etc.  This is mitigated by using boreholes instead of loops under gardens (also required for anywhere without substantial land) but the cost of installing a borehole heat exchanger is considerable compared to "just" digging up the garden.

[PlainName]

Problem heat pumps is you've stil got to pump it - while that's more efficient than direct heating/cooling it's not free and that energy has to come from somewhere. Pumped storage is free in that respect - you could use solar electricity to pump water uphill and then it costs nothing to both store and use the stored energy. If you could use stored heat in the same way that would be pretty cool, and the output could even drive a heat pump...

Just in case, by 'free' and 'nothing' I refer to ongoing costs. Clearly, there will be infrastructure costs and maintenance costs whatever you do.

[Zero999]

Ha! Being able to "capture" heat when the weather is hot, "store" it in some way, and release it when it's cold would be a major achievement.

In many countries these days (even in temperate climates now), summers can be extremely hot and winters still pretty cold.
Having to spend huge amounts of energy to cool down, then huge amounts to heat up, is a real waste.

I don't have any miracle technology in store to do that efficiently, though.

Large bodies of water do this very well.  Too bad the Gulf Stream has already been invented! 

Once the Gulf Strean goes AWOL, and it is well on the way to that, we are stuffed. Gonna be global freezing so far as we're concerned.

Except the Gulf Stream makes little difference to the climate of most of the UK. Whatever happens to the ocean currents, this country will always be to the east of a large ocean, with the prevailing wind blowing from the west, keeping it milder in winter then countries more inland.

I wonder if it makes sense to use a sea source heat pump for coastal locations?

[PlainName]

I thought it was the Gulf Stream that keeps us temperate. We're on the same latitude as a lot of very much colder places, because they don't have a similar stream taking the edge off. According to Wikipedia:

The North Atlantic Current of the Gulf Stream, along with similar warm air currents, helps keep Ireland and the western coast of Great Britain a couple of degrees warmer than the east.[34] However, the difference is most dramatic in the western coastal islands of Scotland.[35] A noticeable effect of the Gulf Stream and the strong westerly winds on Europe occurs along the Norwegian coast.[12] Northern parts of Norway lie close to the Arctic zone, most of which is covered with ice and snow in winter. However, almost all of Norway's coast remains free of ice and snow throughout the year.[36] The warming effect provided by the Gulf Stream has allowed fairly large settlements to be developed and maintained on the coast of Northern Norway, including Tromsø, the third largest city north of the Arctic Circle. Weather systems warmed by the Gulf Stream drift into Northern Europe, also warming the climate behind the Scandinavian mountains.

Maybe Scotland doesn't count, being a bit uppity, but I reckon Cornwall does

[NiHaoMike]

https://hackaday.com/2022/08/03/restore-your-formerly-useless-ouya-console/

[tom66]

I wonder if it makes sense to use a sea source heat pump for coastal locations?

Water source heat pumps are an uncommon technology but in properties located near a substantial body of water, or for commercial facilities, they have been used.  You are dealing with a wider range of water temperature compared to the ground so there are greater seasonal variations, but provided it's flowing it won't go below freezing (and it's -5C and below where heat pumps start to roll off considerably.)

[Zero999]

I thought it was the Gulf Stream that keeps us temperate. We're on the same latitude as a lot of very much colder places, because they don't have a similar stream taking the edge off. According to Wikipedia:

The North Atlantic Current of the Gulf Stream, along with similar warm air currents, helps keep Ireland and the western coast of Great Britain a couple of degrees warmer than the east.[34] However, the difference is most dramatic in the western coastal islands of Scotland.[35] A noticeable effect of the Gulf Stream and the strong westerly winds on Europe occurs along the Norwegian coast.[12] Northern parts of Norway lie close to the Arctic zone, most of which is covered with ice and snow in winter. However, almost all of Norway's coast remains free of ice and snow throughout the year.[36] The warming effect provided by the Gulf Stream has allowed fairly large settlements to be developed and maintained on the coast of Northern Norway, including Tromsø, the third largest city north of the Arctic Circle. Weather systems warmed by the Gulf Stream drift into Northern Europe, also warming the climate behind the Scandinavian mountains.

Maybe Scotland doesn't count, being a bit uppity, but I reckon Cornwall does

Most of the heat goes past the bulk of the British Isles, towards Iceland. Here are a couple of interesting articles.
https://all-geo.org/highlyallochthonous/2012/06/what-do-you-mean-the-gulf-stream-doesnt-keep-europe-warm-how-even-scientists-are-afflicted-by-urban-myths/
http://ocp.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/div/ocp/gs/

Western Europe is mild because because it's downwind of a large ocean. We're on the same latitude as Western Canada, which has similar temperatures.

The position of land masses and ocean encourages areas of high and low pressure to set up in the North Pacific and Atlantic basins, which divert warm air over the west coasts. I made a post about this last year.
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/the-8-bit-guys-house-in-texas/msg3487896/#msg3487896

Our climate will be affected if the ocean currents change, but it simply isn't true we'll be plunged into the freezer. The Gulf Stream myth will never die. Remember back in February-March 2018, we had the Beast from the East which followed a mild January? What happened to the gulf stream? Nothing. It didn't change path, the atmospheric circulation did. During January there were positive heights to our south and negative to our north, drawing in the wind from the Atlantic, then in February, heights rose to the north-east and fell to our south, drawing in an north-easterly flow off the freezing continent. By April heights rose to the south-east and fell to the west, turning the wind into the south, giving a warm month and setting the scene for a hot summer.

[PlainName]

Here are a couple of interesting articles.

Well, that first article basically says "You're wrong, so there", which isn't awfully convincing. But it did give a link to https://www.americanscientist.org/article/the-source-of-europes-mild-climate which was interesting. However, the chap shows a model with enabled/disabled ocean currents (for heat transfer) and says there is little difference, but the charts shows that there is a difference over the UK. OK, so perhaps a matter of 5-8 degrees (hard to tell) and he says that's nothing compared to 15-20. Yes, kind of, but a couple of degrees does make a lot of difference just above freezing. At least, I notice!

[TimFox]

I wonder if it makes sense to use a sea source heat pump for coastal locations?

Water source heat pumps are an uncommon technology but in properties located near a substantial body of water, or for commercial facilities, they have been used.  You are dealing with a wider range of water temperature compared to the ground so there are greater seasonal variations, but provided it's flowing it won't go below freezing (and it's -5C and below where heat pumps start to roll off considerably.)

My college recently announced that they have replaced the ancient steam plant with a large heat pump that couples to a deep underground water source, which I believe they said remained constant at about +50^o F = +10^o C.

[Marco]

the cost of installing a borehole heat exchanger is considerable compared to "just" digging up the garden.

Most of the cost estimates are for retrofit, but that's a fundamentally different business from large scale installs. If all new housing developments go ground source heatpumps and companies cost optimize specifically for such projects, costs can probably drop to less than a third than for retrofit. Same if it's done with semi-district heating using deeper boreholes. Transport cost amortized over far more work, can potentially run it in two shifts, no need to setup in a build up environment, no yard to dig up.

For a retrofit the drill rig is likely tied up for 3 days, for 10 hours of drilling. Not very efficient.

[Zero999]

Here are a couple of interesting articles.

Well, that first article basically says "You're wrong, so there", which isn't awfully convincing. But it did give a link to https://www.americanscientist.org/article/the-source-of-europes-mild-climate which was interesting. However, the chap shows a model with enabled/disabled ocean currents (for heat transfer) and says there is little difference, but the charts shows that there is a difference over the UK. OK, so perhaps a matter of 5-8 degrees (hard to tell) and he says that's nothing compared to 15-20. Yes, kind of, but a couple of degrees does make a lot of difference just above freezing. At least, I notice!

The wind influences the ocean currents to some degree.

Note how the temperature gradients in the Pacific and Atlantic are similar, how they go diagonally from the south to north, east to west?  Note the annual temperatures of Vancouver and Southampton, both around 50 parallel are within 1 °C of each other. The fact Southampton is a 1 °C warmer could easily be explained by other factors. For example, it's on an island, so when the wind turns into the east during winter it's moderated by the North Sea, whist Vancouver doesn't have the same degree of protection.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vancouver#Climate
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southampton#Climate

We don't know what would happen if the Gulf Stream were to stop or weaken. Some parts of the world will get warmer. It's possible parts of the UK could warm. The jet stream is driven by the temperature difference between the pole an equator. The Gulf stream makes parts of the arctic region near the UK warmer. If they cool down, it might make the jet stream stronger, bringing more mild air to the UK and make high pressure blocking around the Norwegian sea less likely, which would reduce the possibility of cold weather over here.

[SiliconWizard]

Ha! Being able to "capture" heat when the weather is hot, "store" it in some way, and release it when it's cold would be a major achievement.

In many countries these days (even in temperate climates now), summers can be extremely hot and winters still pretty cold.
Having to spend huge amounts of energy to cool down, then huge amounts to heat up, is a real waste.

I don't have any miracle technology in store to do that efficiently, though.

Large bodies of water do this very well.  Too bad the Gulf Stream has already been invented! 

It's quite obvious we could benefit from way better than this. It's clearly not enough. That was the point of my post.

Things would just be much worse without the oceans. But without the oceans, we would have many other problems as well anyway.

Point is, we DO spend a lot of energy heating up in winters and cooling down in summers. Even in temperate climates these days. So any technology that could help significantly with that would definitely be a MAJOR achievement.

[TimFox]

Following up to my post about my undergraduate college:
Here is a news release about their change to "geothermal" energy  https://apps.carleton.edu/voice/?story_id=1000156466&issue_id=1000156446
In the late '60s, when I was a student there, "geothermal" meant mining underground deposits of hot water, but this system is a huge heat pump with an unchanging reservoir of underground water.
At that location, winter temperatures go down to -20^o F = -29^o C  and summer temperatures up to +100^o F = +38^o C, the joys of a mid-continental climate.

[Zero999]

Following up to my post about my undergraduate college:
Here is a news release about their change to "geothermal" energy  https://apps.carleton.edu/voice/?story_id=1000156466&issue_id=1000156446
In the late '60s, when I was a student there, "geothermal" meant mining underground deposits of hot water, but this system is a huge heat pump with an unchanging reservoir of underground water.
At that location, winter temperatures go down to -20^o F = -29^o C  and summer temperatures up to +100^o F = +38^o C, the joys of a mid-continental climate.

I always thought geothermal was hot water underground. I suppose geology limits the potential for ground source heat pumps, which are also no good in polar climates where the ground is permanently frozen.

I wonder how much of an effect it would have on the urban heat island if everyone switched to heat pumps and electric cars? It's bound to locally cool the climate, which would mean people would need to heat there homes a bit more.

[SiliconWizard]

I guess when the air is hot, we could work out the opposite, geothermal energy using the temperature difference between outside air (relatively hot) and temperature deep down underground, which can be pretty cold. Not sure if the temp difference would be enough to get something useful.

[Miyuki]

The ground does it pretty well.  It's more or less around 12 - 20C all year round, once you go a meter or so below the surface.  That's why ground source heat pumps are such a good idea.

I did read something that suggested if every house had a GSHP, they'd freeze the ground during the winter and then defrost it during the summer (if they used the GSHP for air conditioning too).  That could cause some disruption to structures and tree roots etc.  This is mitigated by using boreholes instead of loops under gardens (also required for anywhere without substantial land) but the cost of installing a borehole heat exchanger is considerable compared to "just" digging up the garden.

Ground heat pumps can be tricky
It works as a huge storage tank, not an infinite source/sink as it is sometimes presented
So if your overall energy is not close to zero you will cause the temperature to rise or drop significantly over years.
Plus the deep well system in many cases causes significant disruption to groundwater.
Look for example at London Underground and their issues with heat

[Bassman59]

Amazon Drive shuts down: https://www.amazon.com/b/?node=23943055011

How many competing cloud storage services are really necessary?

[Zero999]

I guess when the air is hot, we could work out the opposite, geothermal energy using the temperature difference between outside air (relatively hot) and temperature deep down underground, which can be pretty cold. Not sure if the temp difference would be enough to get something useful.

If it's very hot, it's possible to power a heat pump from the temperature difference. Look up absorption refrigeration.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absorption_refrigerator

[AnalogueLove1867]

Amazon Drive shuts down: https://www.amazon.com/b/?node=23943055011

How many competing cloud storage services are really necessary?

Funny how all the technologically "progressive" people jumped in at cloud this and cloud that as if it was somehow mandatory lol.
I already pay for unlimited internet. Working out the costs for Storage 40+ terabytes of data. Ended up just purchasing hard-drives.
For data error checking and other reasons. Cloud storage just doesn't cut it.
You don't truly "own" your data when it is on someone else's hardware anyway.

[Karel]

On October 13, 2022 we're removing the option to transfer playlists to your Fitbit watch through your computer. ...

https://help.fitbit.com/articles/en_US/Help_article/2251.htm

[SilverSolder]

On October 13, 2022 we're removing the option to transfer playlists to your Fitbit watch through your computer. ...

https://help.fitbit.com/articles/en_US/Help_article/2251.htm

Garmin's fitness offerings are relatively free of BS, if anyone is interested in that kind of thing.

[PlainName]

Looks like you can still transfer playlists but only via an app that will cost you £12/mnth.

Can't imagine why the free computer means is being stopped.

[SiliconWizard]

Because it's free?

[PlainName]

Uh-huh

[tom66]

I got a Fitbit as a gift, it lasted 18 months,  Fitbit replaced it under warranty, that lasted 18 months.

Before the first one died I bought one for my girlfriend and that lasted 12 months.  A friend of mine had their slightly more advanced watch with the colour LCD and the battery lasted just over 2 years, now it will run the watch for about 10 minutes before dying.

Will never touch the things.  Utter crap build quality, and the software is rubbish.