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All non agri plant to run on clear diesel from 1st April 2022


weedkiller

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Yes the exemption has been there for years - and a few have been caught in the past too. (Just like the general population!) The likelihood of being caught has increased  exponentially in the last twenty years as enforcement has got much stricter. In 2000 the tax loss was estimated at about £1.6bn (that's £2.5bn at today's prices) its now estimated at £50m. 

Edited by Junior8
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23 hours ago, ImagineerTom said:

If a multi million pound, annual, predictable, stable festival like Glastonbury (with it’s heavy eco focus) can’t even get close to justifying mains infrastructure installation what possible hope does a small funfair (itself made up of dozens of small business and freelancers with no long term stability) have of installing mains hook in and distro at the 20+ different sites they visit per year?

Glastonbury is probably right at the "hard" end of the spectrum for grid electricity:

  • Very large total load (can't find helpful answers, but some MegaWatts seems likely) which means dedicated HV (maybe even EHV) assets will be needed.
  • A short (5 days?) event once every two years, with no other significant usage of the site in between
  • A rural location a long way from existing infrastructure and with no other large users of power near by to share infrastructure with.

Glastonbury's own website notes that they have made significant investment in on-site renewables, and parts of the site are powered by the grid. I suspect they have run up against the limits of what the 11kV circuit serving the site can accommodate in this regard, and found that a dedicated 11kV circuit (or even 33kV) will be required to go further, which is a huge step up in costs. The same sort of costs which are being funded for connecting power to banks of rapid chargers at motorway service stations in fact, where 8 x rapid chargers need either a dedicated 11kV supply or a 33kV ring main connection - in South East England the service station connections will run at 11kV initially but be built to allow upgrading to 33kV when demand increases further!

That is the hard end. The easier end is 100kW or less of demand at urban sites, where the existing LV network can supply the load, or a dedicated cable from the nearest substation can (if you want to explore this for real across Liverpool City Region and North Wales, have a look at the ConnectMore Interactive Map). I know Oxford council have been very active in getting street traders (many of them regular pitch holders there every day) off generators and onto pop-up power columns in the street. The driver in that case is air quality locally (i.e. not covering the stone buildings in soot!), but a shift in costs will help such ideas spread. A good number of events these days occupy sites which, whilst the events might be sort-duration and annual, host multiple events throughout the year. This spreads the costs of getting the connection wider, although it does make for more administration if trying to charge costs back to the end users of the energy. If a canal boat marina can manage it, is a street market going to be hugely harder?

The electricity industry needs to step up to this challenge as well, because getting a temporary power connection at the moment is hard, expensive and unpredictable (the DNO new connections teams which do it are also overloaded, which doesn't help). I think there is room for both technical innovation (standard insulating material meter box / distro hook-up which doesn't need an earth rod?) and better processes (accurate automatic connection quotes) which help all round. OFGEM can encourage this, but there has to be some sort of cost driver or it won't be done.

I wonder how easy it is to power a burger van from an EV charger?

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The people who will be responsible for creating plug in points at fair sites / markets / show grounds for funfairs and circus are the same local authorities who have had budgets slashed and can barely provide school meals- we are years away from them being able to invest in proper power infrastructure for “soft” events. 
 

and most festival / event sites are used for a single event per year- it will be decades before grid power solutions are available for those scenarios. 

Edited by ImagineerTom
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This is the nub of things. 

Most markets that take place frequently already have mains power of some kind available and in reality the needs of the average market are tiny.

Truth is the style of fairground presentation in this country has meant that any idea of providing hard power would always fail a cost benefit analysis since the infrastructure might be in use for three days a year in reality about 30 hours maximum probably - and in the past wold have been further discouraged by the requirement for 110v DC which would have made it even more inflexible for other uses. The city nearest to me which has one   site that takes both a fair annually and a  circus every other year has its biggest one day fair on a car park elsewhere. Permanent power will never happen here - nobody will pay. It simply won't pay them either landlord or tenant and the public wouldn't see it as any kind of priority. What happens over the next thirty years is anybody's guess but both the tenting circus and travelling fairground trades are in for a very uncertain time one way or another I fear.

 

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My local square has a three phase supply in a cabinet that is never used. The council cannot agree insurance between departments so it sits there locked up while generators rumble away when required. The entire town is festooned with 16 amp supplies for Christmas lights and nobody seems to know who pays the meter but you ain't getting into that 3ph, no siree.

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4 hours ago, kerry davies said:

My local square has a three phase supply in a cabinet that is never used. The council cannot agree insurance between departments so it sits there locked up while generators rumble away when required. The entire town is festooned with 16 amp supplies for Christmas lights and nobody seems to know who pays the meter but you ain't getting into that 3ph, no siree.

Our local council will permit the use of their pillars following a full RAMS and liability agreement/insurance.

 

Christmas lights are not usually metered in my experience.

I have previously been involved with 4 venues.

Lights get installed and current measured with a clamp. That info is passed to DNO with the timeswitch make and type details and settings. DNO issues invoice for pre-payment before switch-on is permitted. They have a preprinted form for the purpose, I dare say it's all on line now.

Edited by sunray
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8 hours ago, Andrew C said:

I was thinking the same - just need to shimmy up with some thick jump leads...

That is the problem - a 275kV grid transformer costs millions (never mind the land take) and the nearest substation on that (National Grid) circuit will be many miles away. Until most of the shared infrastructure is built for another purpose (a moderate sized on-shore wind or solar farm would do fine), the first mover has a huge capital cost burden. By comparison, sorting out the insurance for the supply pillar should be much easier. Maybe the council should franchise it to one of the companies which manage and operate EV chargers? They would get some income, and whoever operates it would have an incentive to get people using it.

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On 1/22/2022 at 9:41 AM, kerry davies said:

My local square has a three phase supply in a cabinet that is never used. The council cannot agree insurance between departments so it sits there locked up while generators rumble away when required. 

In similar fashion, a civic square in a town near me has a well-specced cabinet with ample supply. The council charge more for the use of this than a generator hire, so everybody just hires in a set. 

Also, access has been outright denied in the past for organisations and events that aren't "politically aligned" with the council. 

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Many council supplies have been installed so as to be useless (either unintentionally or intentionally). 30ma RCDs across a 63A or 125A 3 phase supply are not uncommon. Earthing arrangements are not always obvious. Isolators and MCBs are often located some distance away from the supply making it hard to rely upon the supply. Access and energisation is often dependent on a council sparky who works 10-4 Mon-Thu if they’re not already called out elsewhere.

It is easy to see why many default to bringing their own supply in the form of a trailer mounted generator.

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The very first council pillar I used (attached to a park bandstand) was simple: Cutout with no seal and 80A fuse, meter with seals, 100A isolator, 3x MK metal clad DSSO. The lid was hinged and secured with a nut and bolt. I think that set-up was quite typical 50 years ago.

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On 1/23/2022 at 10:47 PM, J Pearce said:

Many council supplies have been installed so as to be useless (either unintentionally or intentionally). 30ma RCDs across a 63A or 125A 3 phase supply are not uncommon. Earthing arrangements are not always obvious. Isolators and MCBs are often located some distance away from the supply making it hard to rely upon the supply. Access and energisation is often dependent on a council sparky who works 10-4 Mon-Thu if they’re not already called out elsewhere.

It is easy to see why many default to bringing their own supply in the form of a trailer mounted generator.

And I've known one area where it was obligatory for any required power to be drawn from their supply.

One unmetered supply we persuaded the DNO to provide for free at a switchstation, initially we begged for access to the 1/16 socket just inside the door of the cable chamber. That was point blank refused but they offered to install a socket on an outside wall as they doing other works. We chatted and they finally installed a pair of  enclosures:  3ph cutout with 3x100A fuse, locked 'off' isolator, 3P D63 MCB, 63A 30mA RCD, a second locked 'off' isolator to bypass the RCD and 3/63 socket. We had key to get to that area, keys for the enclosures, key for the isolator. If we asked, one of the DNO guys would attend to inspect our site temps and if he was satisfied with our RCD's would unlock the bypass.

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I'm concerned that we will have a large power outage here (as the Texas grid collapse). No-one has offered alternatives that can offer enough power to run the country 24/7 without diesel/kerosene/gas being burned.

My local hospital has several MW of diesel generator for emergency use, when the tank is dry people die.

see 

 

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12 hours ago, sunray said:

one of the DNO guys would attend to inspect our site temps and if he was satisfied with our RCD's would unlock the bypass.

More ballrooms / venues need an arrangement like that, far too many have high capacity outlets that are next to useless because they're on a single 30mA RCD. 

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