Maritime UK Launches Offshore Wind Plan
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on offshoreWIND.biz.
This is the sub-heading.
Maritime UK has unveiled its Offshore Wind Plan which makes a series of recommendations for how the maritime sector, the offshore wind sector, and governments can work together to maximise growth
These are the first three paragraphs and they outline the plan.
The plan outlines how the growth of offshore wind can provide opportunities across the maritime supply chain in sectors like ports, shipbuilding, crewing, and professional services.
Opportunities identified in the Offshore Wind Plan include building vessels in the UK to support developments and further growing UK ports as centres for manufacturing and assembly for offshore developments
Key recommendations and proposals within the plan include: creating quality career pathways for young people; rewarding higher UK supply chain content in offshore wind projects; reforming the planning system to enable green projects to be delivered quicker; and encouraging lenders and investors to finance infrastructure and vessels
Note.
- Maritime UK have a web site.
- The report seems to be comprehensive.
- The report predicts hundreds of ships to build and service wind farms will be needed.
Overall, Maritime UK feel that the maritime sector has a lot to gain from co-operation with the offshore wind sector.
Improved Service Operation Vessels (SOVs)
I don’t see why the large number of Service Operation Vessels (SOVs) needed to serve all the wind farms around our shores, can’t be designed and substantially built in the UK.
In the 1970s, one of Metier Management Systems’ customers for Artemis were the shipbuilders; Austin & Pickersgill, who at the time were building a cargo ship called the SD14, which had been designed to replace the American Liberty ships.
In total 211 SD14s were built in the UK, Greece, Brazil and Argentina.
SD14 stands for Shelter Deck – 14,000 tonnes.
We surely have the technology from companies like BAe Systems, Rolls-Royce and others to design an advanced Service Operation Vessel.
Diversifying A US$200 billion Market: The Alternatives To Li-ion Batteries For Grid-Scale Energy Storage
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on Energy Storage News.
This is the introductory paragraph.
The global need for grid-scale energy storage will rise rapidly in the coming years as the transition away from fossil fuels accelerates. Energy storage can help meet the need for reliability and resilience on the grid, but lithium-ion is not the only option, writes Oliver Warren of climate and ESG-focused investment bank and advisory group DAI Magister.
Oliver starts by saying we need to ramp up capacity.
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), to decarbonise electricity globally the world’s energy storage capacity must increase by a factor of 40x+ by 2030, reaching a total of 700 GW, or around 25% of global electricity usage (23,000TWh per annum). For comparison, this would be like swelling the size of the UK’s land to that of the USA.
Similar to how “nobody ever gets fired for buying IBM”, lithium-ion holds a similar place in grid scale electrical storage today.
And just as IBM did in the last decades of the last century, the builders of lithium-ion will fight back.
He then lists the problems of grid-scale lithium-ion batteries.
- Shortage of cobalt.
- Toxic and polluting extraction of some much needed metals and rare earths from unstable countries.
- Lack of capacity to load follow.
- Limited lifespan.
He does suggest vehicle-to-grid can provide 7TWh of storage by 2030, but it has similar problems to lithium-ion grid scale batteries.
Finally, he covers these what he considers several viable methods of energy storage in detail.
He introduces them with this paragraph.
No single killer application or technology exists to get the job done. Diversification is key with success dependent on the wide-scale adoption of multiple grid-scale energy storage solutions.
- Energy Dome – Italy – Stylish Use of CO2
- Augwind Energy – Israel – Stores Energy As Compressed Air Underground
- Cheesecake Energy – UK – Stores Energy As Heat And Compressed Air
- Highview Power – UK – Stores Energy As Liquefied Air
- Ocean Grazer – Netherlands – Ocean Battery
- RheEnergise – UK – High Density Hydro
- Lumenion – Germany/Japan – Stores Energy As Heat
- Energy Vault – Switzerland – Raising And Lowering Of Weights
Note.
- All systems are environmentally-friendly and use readily-available materials like air, water, sea-water, steel and concrete for their systems.
- The most exotic materials used are probably in the control computers.
- Some systems use readily-available proven turbo-machinery.
- Most systems appear to be scalable.
- All systems would appear to have a working life measured in decades.
- I would expect that most well-educated teenagers could understand how these systems worked.
Only Augwind Energy and Lumenion are new to me.
He finally sums up the economics and the market potential.
Our ability to expand energy storage capacity is one of the most pressing issues that will determine whether this defining ‘transitional’ decade is a success. But we’ll need to invest wisely into the right technologies that get the greatest bang for the buck (in terms of GWh capacity and return on capital) given the limited lifespan of Li-Ion and the decarbonisation of the grid.
At a current capital cost of US$2,000 per kW quoted by the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) for 6-hour Li-ion battery storage, the 700GW of capacity needed by 2030 equates to around a US$1.5 trillion market over the coming decade, making it worth nearly US$200 billion a year.
The Energy Storage News article is a comprehensive must read for anyone, who is considering purchasing or investing in energy storage.
I have some further thoughts.
From My Experience Would I Add Any Other Systems?
I would add the following.
- Form Energy, because its iron-air battery is well-backed financially.
- Gravitricity, because it can use disused mine shafts to store energy and the world has lots of those.
- STORE Consortium, because its 3D-printed concrete hemispheres, that store energy using pressurised sea-water can be placed within a wind farm.
I also suspect that someone will come up with an energy storage system based on tidal range.
Finance
When we started Metier Management Systems, finance to breakout from the first initial sales was a problem. We solved the problem with good financial planning and an innovative bank manager who believed us all the way.
David, was a rogue, but he was a rogue on the side of the angels. Long after Metier, he even came to my fiftieth birthday party.
David would have found a way to fund any of these systems, as they tick all the boxes of demonstrated, environmentally-friendly, safe and understandable. They are also likely to be bought by companies, governments and organisations with a high net value, a very respectable reputation and/or large amounts of money.
I also think, that just as we did with the original Artemis project management system, some of these systems can be leased to the operators.
Second-Use Of Systems
Several of these systems could be moved on to a new location, if say they were supporting an industry that failed.
That would surely help the financing of systems.
KPF Unveils Plans For Old Street Skyscraper
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on the Architects’ Journal.
This is the sub-heading.
Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates (KPF) has unveiled early plans for a 160m office tower by Old Street roundabout in East London
These three paragraphs describe the development.
The site at 99 City Road is currently occupied by a 10-storey postmodern office block developed in the late 1980s as headquarters for satellite telecommunications company Inmarsat. However, Inmarsat relocated last year and developer Endurance Land bought the site in spring for £150 million.
The new owner now wants to demolish 37 per cent of the existing building, before vertically extending it to create an approximately 37-storey tower providing an additional 45,000m2 of office space, according to early plans published for consultation.
The tower scheme would feature improved public realm around the building, as well as active frontages, café space and 510m2 of flexible community space – including a triple-height ‘great room’, which could hold markets, exhibitions, and performances.
I took these pictures these morning as I passed the site at the front of the top-deck of a 21 bus.
Note.
- I showed the approach to the station, to show the number of high rises in the area.
- The Inmarsat Headquarters at 99 City Road is on the South-East corner of the roundabout, with a new station entrance alongside.
- Unusually it has Inmarsat shown vertically on the front.
- The double-fronted curved building is the Bezier Apartments, which made the short-list for the Carbuncle Cup in 2010.
- The building on the South-West corner is the White Collar Factory.
The construction of the new Old Street station seems as slow as ever.
I have some thoughts.
Will The Building Fit In?
The architects’ Journal article says this.
Consultation documents said the tower’s design is ‘rooted in the distinct history of the local areas’, its appearance ‘tak[ing] inspiration from the Victorian buildings in the neighbouring conservation areas of Bunhill Fields, Finsbury Square and South Shoreditch’.
I can see some arguments as at 37 stories, it’s two higher than the Barbican towers.
Will Access Between The New Building And Old Street Station Be Good?
This map from Transport for London shows the future layout of Old Street Roundabout.
Note.
- The Inmarsat Headquarters is in the South-East corner of the roundabout.
- There is a new entrance to the station between the building and the Bezier apartments.
- The new main entrance to the station in the middle of the roundabout.
- Original plans showed a lift to the main station entrance from the surface, but two may have been built.
There appears to be a subway and two light-controlled pedestrian crossings between the new development and the station.
This Google Map shows the current state of Old Street Roundabout and the front of the Inmarsat Headquarters.
It can’t be long before developers build on the other two sides of the roundabout.
Who Will Be The Tenants?
This article on the Hackney Gazette, is entitled New 36-Storey Office Tower Proposed For Old Street.
It says this about the tenants.
The new site would contain approximately 4,000 sqm of new affordable workspaces that would be accessible to local businesses and organisations.
I suspect that these offices will be much better than some of the dumps Metier worked out of in the 1970s and 1980s.
Just promising to show the view could get a few visitors and some possible sales
Will The Building Have An Observation Platform?
At 160 metres tall, this building will be 150 metres shorter than The Shard, but it will be 27 metres than the Barbican towers.
So why not have an observation platform?
I suspect that from there, you will be able to see Hackney Mashes, as there are few buildings in between.
Portugal Were Glued, Stitched And Morocco-Bound
Metier’s amazing company accountant; Brian used to use a phrase of screwed, glued and tattooed, when a person or company was in trouble with the authorities and they would have to pay up.
My father was a printer and bookbinder and after today’s World Cup match between Portugal and Morocco, he’d have come up with an appropriate phrase like glued, stitched and Morocco-bound.
Note that both Brian and my father had a lot of the real East End about them.
Hanover Square – 9th May 2022
I went to have a look at the new entrance to Bond Street station in Hanover Square.
I have a strong affection for Hanover Square. The first picture shows a new block now, but it was where my bank manager friend had his office for a time.
I spent a lot of time with him and meetings in that office overlooking the square had a lot to do with the success of Metier Management Systems.
They don’t make bank managers like that anymore.
Are The Office Of Rail And Road (Or Their Lawyers) Too Risk Averse?
An article in the April 2022 Edition of Modern Railways is entitled Uckfield Third Rail Is NR Priority.
This is the first two paragraphs.
Electrification of the line between Hurst Green and Uckfield in East Sussex and the remodelling of East Croydon are the top Network Rail investment priorities south of the river, according to Southern Region Managing Director John Halsall. He told Modern Railways that third rail is now the preferred option for the Uckfield Line, as it would allow the route to use the pool of third-rail EMUs in the area. This is in preference to the plan involving overhead electrification and use of dual-voltage units put forward by then-Network Rail director Chris Gibb in his 2017 report (p66, September 2017 issue).
NR has put forward options for mitigating the safety risk involved with the third-rail system, including switching off the power in station areas when no trains are present and section isolation systems to protect track workers. ‘The Office of Rail and Road hasn’t yet confirmed third rail would be acceptable, but we are working out ways in which it could be’ Mr Halsall told Modern Railways. He added that bi-mode trains with batteries were not a feasible option on this line, as the 10-car trains in use on the route would not be able to draw sufficient charge between London and Hurst Green to power the train over the 25 miles on to Uckfield.
As an Electrical Engineer, who’s first real job in industry at fifteen was installing safety guards on guillotines nearly sixty years ago, I don’t believe that an acceptable solution can’t be devised.
But as at Kirkby on Merseyside, the Office Of Rail And Road, do seem to be stubbornly against any further third-rail installations in the UK.
I wonder what, the Office Of Rail And Road would say, if Transport for London wanted to extend an Underground Line for a few miles to serve a new housing development? On previous experience, I suspect Nanny would say no!
But is it more than just third-rail, where the Office Of Rail And Road is refusing to allow some technologies on the railway?
Battery-Electric Trains
I first rode in a viable battery-electric train in February 2015, but we still haven’t seen any other battery-electric trains in service on UK railways running under battery power.
Does the Office Of Rail And Road, believe that battery-electric trains are unsafe, with the lithium-ion batteries likely to catch fire at any time?
Hydrogen-Powered Trains
The hydrogen-powered Alstom Coradia iLint has been in service in Germany since September 2018.
But progress towards a viable hydrogen train has been very slow in the UK, with the only exception being demonstrations at COP26.
Are The Office Of Rail And Road still frightened of the Hindenburg?
Although hydrogen-powered buses have been allowed.
A Tale From Lockheed
When Metier Management Systems were sold to Lockheed, I worked for the American company for a couple of years.
I met some of their directors and they told some good American lawyer jokes, such was their disgust for the more money-grabbing of the American legal profession.
At the time, Flight International published details of an innovative landing aid for aircraft, that had been developed by Lockheed. It was a suitcase-sized landing light, that could be quickly setup up on a rough landing strip, so that aircraft, like a Hercules, with an outstanding rough field performance could land safely.
I read somewhere that a Flying Doctor service or similar had acquired some of these landing aids, so they could provide a better service to their clients.
But Lockheed’s lawyers were horrified, that they would get sued, if someone was seriously injured or even died, whilst the aid was being used.
Apparently, in the end, the aids were marked Not For Use In The USA.
Conclusion
I do wonder, if third-rail electrification, battery-electric trains and hydrogen-powered trains have come up against a wall created by over-cautious lawyers.
Hayes & Harlington Station – 15th September 2021
Hayes & Harlington station is the latest Crossrail station to be more or less completed.
Note.
- The station is a big improvement on what was there previously.
- The building with the green stripes down the front used to be the offices of Metier Management Systems, of which I was a founder.
- A big development is being built to the South of the station, which is shown in the first to pictures.
There are still a few things to do, but it’s almost a complete station.
Services
It looks like Crossrail will run four trains per hour (tph) through the station all day.
Great Western Railway run two tph between Paddington and Didcot Parkway, that stop at the station.
Metier’s First And Second Ipswich Office
My Scottish Borders correspondent has asked me about the first office Metier had in Ipswich.
Courtesy of Google Streetview, I was able to capture this image.
Note.
- They were in the four story building with the yellow cladding.
- I see it’s still called Pearl Assurance House.
- Shadu Hair and Beauty used to be a rather good camera shop.
For those of you, who don’t know Ipswich, if you walk straight ahead and keep right, you end up in the centre of Ipswich.
It wasn’t very large, but it was certainly in better condition, than some of the offices we had in London.
This is the second office in Fore Street.
If I remember correctly, the office was found by Wendy, who responded to my advert in the East Anglian Daily Times, saying, that we were looking for an Office Dogsbody.
Piney Point: Emergency Crews Try To Plug Florida Toxic Wastewater Leak
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on the BBC.
This is the introductory paragraph.
Emergency crews in Florida have been working to prevent a “catastrophic” flood after a leak was found in a large reservoir of toxic wastewater.
This Google Map shows the location.
Note.
- At the top of the map is an area called Tampa Bay Estuarine Ecosystem Rock Ponds.
- The reservoir appears to be in the South East corner of the map.
- There appear to be several chemical works to the West of the highway.
This second Google Map shows the reservoir at a larger scale.
Note.
- The picture in the BBC article was taken from the North West.
- The problem reservoir is right and above of centre.
- To its right is Lake Price, which appears to be the sort of lake to sail a boat and perhaps do a bit of fishing and swimming.
- Moore Lake to the South appears similar to Lake Price.
It looks to me that it is not the place to have an environmental incident.
This article in The Times says this.
Engineers are furiously pumping the phosphate-rich water into the sea to avoid an uncontrolled spill at Piney Point, whose failure could unleash a 20ft-high wall of toxic effluent.
Pumping it into the sea? Surely not?
I suspect there could have been a mixture of sloppy management and loose regulation, with minimal enforcement and I’ll be interested to see what recommendations are put forward by the inevitable investigation.
In my varied past, I was once indirectly involved, in the toxic waste that comes out of chemical plants. At the time, I was working for ICI in Runcorn and my main job was building designing and building instruments for the various chemical plants in and around Runcorn.
As they had hired me because of my programming skills, they asked me if I could do a few small jobs on their Ferranti Argus 500, which could be plugged in to both their Varian NMR machine and their AEI mass spectrometer.
With the former, to get better accuracy in analysis of chemicals, I would take successive scans of a sample and aggregate them together. The accuracy of the results would be proportion to the square root of the number of scans.
The second to my mind was more difficult and much more interesting.
This explanation of mass spectroscopy is from Wikipedia.
Mass spectrometry (MS) is an analytical technique that is used to measure the mass-to-charge ratio of ions. The results are typically presented as a mass spectrum, a plot of intensity as a function of the mass-to-charge ratio. Mass spectrometry is used in many different fields and is applied to pure samples as well as complex mixtures.
ICI at Runcorn had a lot of complex mixtures and the aim of my project, was to take a mass spectrum and automatically decide what chemicals were present in the mixture.
The mass spectra were presented as a long graph on a roll of thermal paper. I noticed that operators would pick out distinctive patterns on the graph, which they told me were distinctive patterns of chlorine ions.
Chlorine has an unusual atomic weight of 35.5 because it is a mixture of two stable isotypes Chlorine-35 and Chlorine-37, which produced these distinctive patterns on the spectra.
I was able to identify these patterns to determine the number of chlorine atoms in a compound. By giving the algorithm a clue in stating how many carbon, oxygen and hydrogen atoms could be involved, it was able to successfully identify what was in a complex mixture.
All this was programmed on computer with just 64K words of memory and a half-megabyte hard disc.
ICI must have been pleased, as I got a bonus.
One of the jobs the software was used for was to identify what chemicals were present in the lagoons alongside the River Weaver, which are shown today in this Google Map.
Note.
- The chemical works, which were part of ICI in the 1960s, to the North of the Weaver Navigation Canal.
- The two former lagoons between the canal and the River Weaver, which seem to have been cleaned out and partially restored.
- Was that a third large lagoon to the South of the River Weaver?
- There also appears to be a fourth smaller triangular lagoon between the canal and the river.
There certainly seems to have been a better clear-up in Runcorn, than in Florida.
I moved on from Runcorn soon after, I’d finished that software and have no idea how or if it developed and was used.
But the techniques I used stayed in my brain and were used at least four times in the future.
- In the design of a Space Allocation Program for ICI Plastics Division.
- In the design of two Project Management systems for Time Sharing Ltd.
And of course, they were also used in designing the scheduler in Artemis for Metier.
I
This Is My Second Lockdown
I can’t be the only person, but in the 1970s, I has locked myself away for nearly a year before. I did it to write the first version of the Project Management software; Artemis.
There are some differences between my situation then and my situation now.
- My wife was alive then and we saw each other for perhaps two days a week.
- I could drive and I occasionally went down the Clopton Crown for the odd pint and meal!
- I hadn’t been diagnosed as a coeliac, as that happened in 1997.
- There was no Internet or social media.
- There was no Radio 5 Live.
- I am a better cook now, than I was then.
- I am within walking distance of a Marks and Spencer Simply Food store.
I think the rules for surviving are as follows.
- Eat and drink enough.
- Have entertaining radio or television on.
- Break the day up with a bit of exercise.
- Get a good night’s sleep.
- Arrange good weather.
Let’s hope this lockdown turns out as well as the last.
The Anonymous Widower 