Major District Heating Scheme to Connect £6bn Meridian Water Development
The title of this post is the same as a press release from Vital Energi.
This is the first three paragraphs.
London’s latest £85m district heating infrastructure is taking shape in Enfield and will be delivered by Vital Energi on behalf of energetik, the energy company owned by Enfield Council.
The new district heating network will accommodate up to 30,000 homes and businesses, including the £6bn Meridian Water development. energetik want to revolutionise the local energy market and improve the reputation of district heating, in a currently unregulated market, to ensure customers receive a quality service.
Vital Energi will design, build, operate and maintain the main energy centre for Meridian Water and install the district heating network over the next 12 years, under a contract worth £15m. This heat network is part of an integrated energy and regeneration strategy in Enfield that will interconnect with energetik’s other networks at Arnos Grove and Ponders End.
The Meridian Water development is certainly going about things in an impressive way.
Reflections At Seventy
I completed by seventh decade this morning at about three, if I remember what my mother told me about the time of my birth correctly.
Dreams Of A Shared Retirement With Celia
Perhaps twelve years ago, my wife;Celia and I made a decision and that was to sell everything in Suffolk, after she retired from the law in perhaps 2015 or so and retire to a much smaller house in somewhere like Hampstead in London.
I remember too, that we discussed retirement in detail on my sixtieth birthday holiday in Majorca.
But of course, things didn’t work out as planned.
Two Deaths And A Stroke
Celia died of a squamous cell carcinoma of the heart on December 11th, 2007.
Then three years later, our youngest son died of pancreatic cancer.
Whether, these two deaths had anything to do with my stroke, I shall never know!
Moving To Dalston
Why would anybody in their right mind move to Dalston in 2010?
It is my spiritual home, with my maternal grandmother being born opposite Dalston Junction station,my father being being born just up the road at the Angel and grandfathers and their ancestors clustered together in Clerkenwell and Shoreditch. My Dalstonian grandmother was from a posh Devonian family called Upcott and I suspect she bequeathed me some of my stubbornness. My other grandmother was a Spencer from Peterborough and she could be difficult too! But that could be because she was widowed at forty-nine!
Celia and I had tried to move to De Beauvoir Town in the 1970s, but couldn’t get a mortgage for a house that cost £7,500, which would now be worth around two million.
So when I gave up driving because the stroke had damaged my eyesight, Dalston and De Beauvoir Town were towards the top of places, where I would move.
I would be following a plan of which Celia would have approved and possibly we would have done, had she lived.
But the clincher was the London Overground, as Dalston was to become the junction between the North London and East London Lines. Surely, if I could find a suitable property in the area, it wouldn’t lose value.
But I didn’t forsee the rise of Dalston!
Taking Control Of My Recovery
I do feel that if I’d been allowed to do what I wanted by my GP, which was to go on Warfarin and test my own INR, I’d have got away with just the first very small stroke I had in about 2009.
In about 2011, one of the world’s top cardiologists told me, that if I got the Warfarin right, I wouldn’t have another stroke.
As a Control Engineer, with all the survival instincts of my genes that have been honed in London, Liverpool and Suffolk, I have now progressed to the drug regime, I wanted after that first small stroke.
I still seem to be keeping the Devil at bay.
Conclusion
I’m ready to fight the next ten years.
Conn By Name, Con Artist By Nature
I have just seen the Chief Executive of Centrica; Ian Conn, giving the most unfeasible explanation, why despite the fact that electricity prices are going down, British Gas will be putting them up by 12.5% from September 11th.
This article on the BBC gives more details.
Now is the time to give British Gas a good kicking by moving to an alternative smaller supplier.
I moved to OVO over two years ago and have had no trouble except.
- Changing from my old Bog Six supplier was a pain, due to the original company’s incompetence. Was that real or deliberate?
- OVO have still not fitted me with a smart meter. But I’m not sure I need one!
OVO have also handled my solar panels without trouble.
Could Trump Organise A Piss-Up In A Brewery?
After reading this report on the BBC and seeing it in full on the ten o’clock news, I think the answer is no!
I am old enough to remember the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Six Day War, which were both events that if they’d been handled in an insensitive manner could have led to something a lot more serious.
Can Trump’s judgement be trusted to deal with Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un?
The guy is just too inexperienced!
Scotland’s Floating Wind Farm
This article on the BBC is entitled World’s first floating wind farm emerges off coast of Scotland.
In the early 1970s, I worked on a unique concept for a reusable oil platform called a Balaena.
I wrote about using a Balaena for a wind turbine in Could a Balaena-Like Structure Be Used As a Wind Power Platform?.
There is also a brief description of the idea in The Balaena Lives.
I have a strong feeling that revisiting all of the work done for a Balaena over forty years ago, could enable a better way to build a floating wind farm.
I would build my Baleana-based floating wind-power turbine like this.
- A steel cylinder is built, which will form the tower, horizontally in a dry dock.
- It is floated out horizontally to some very deep water perhaps in a fjord.
- It is then raised to a vertical position by letting a calculated amount of sea water into the tank.
- It will float vertically, if the weight profile is right and by adjusting water levels in the tank, the top can be raised on lowered.
- The tower is adjusted to a convenient height and the turbine is placed on the top.
- It would then be towed vertically into position.
Note that Balaenas were designed to sit on the sea-bed using a skirt and a gum-boot principle to hold them to the bottom, with extra anchors and steel ropes.
Grenfell Tower Gas Pipes Left Exposed, Despite Fire Safety Expert’s Orders
The title of this post is that of an article in the Guardian.
Read the article and you’ll see the standard of the work done on the gas system in the tower by National Grid.
This is a paragraph.
In March, three months before the blaze, residents told the London fire brigade (LFB) that people living in the 24-storey tower were so scared by the pipes “that they are having a panic attack”.
There is a lot more like that.
Interestingly, Cadent Gas; the division of National Grid that did the work was spun off and is now owned partly by the Qatari government.
A gas system, when it is installed by nincompoops is a disaster waiting to happen.
Workmanship of the quality shown in the pictures would have been rejected by the inspectors on the chemical plants, I worked on in the 1960s, so why when the consultant rejected the installation, was action not taken by Cadent?
The gas may not have caused the Grenfell House fire, but I wonder if the unprotected gas pipe fractured in the heat of the fire and then just added to the inferno.
Help For Charlie Gard
This article on the BBC is entitled Charlie Gard: Pope and Trump offer parents support.
I think this Pope is a good man, and I suspect his kind words would be welcome.
But whilst Trummkopf does nothing to abolish the death penalty in the United States, his unwanted comments should be treated with the contempt they deserve.
The Spanish Like Their Beer
I took these pictures in Spain
I actually drunk four or possibly five different varieties of gluten-free beer in my week in the country.
I was also surprised to see gluten-free Brewdog and beer from St. Peter’s in El Cortes Ingles.
Fashion Goes Around And Around
This is the front page of today’s Times 2.
Note the bottom line.
(brace yourself for the velvet bikini)
Celia had a bright French orange velvet bikini in the mid-1970s.
Nothing is new.
If I remember Celia liked it, but then she always liked bright colours! Except yellow!
The Anonymous Widower 