After apparently being doomed for ever to have to live with a 0.5 Mbt/s download speed, and no hope that Openreach would ever install anything faster, salvation has arrived.
A local firm is erecting short wi-fi transmitting masts on suitable prominent locations, and we now get 30 Mbt/s to a small dish pointing at a hill two miles away.
So far, with a month's experience, the service has been excellent with a steady speed and no glitches. The firm is based 3 miles away, respond immediately to a local phone call, and during set-up just drove over to the pole to adjust it a bit.
It's half the price of the old service, sixty times the speed, and far more reliable. The old speed was only a theoretical 0.5. It would be much less at times, sometimes unusable, with sudden cut-offs.
So no more long expensive calls to a useless centre in India, just a local call to a bloke up the road with a van. As they tell prospective customers, if you can see a windmill, you can have fast broadband. They favour locations next to windmills because of the height, but also windmills need good internet connection themselves, and good road access.
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>> They favour locations next to windmills because of the height, but also windmills need good internet connection themselves
However did they manage before internet?
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>> >> They favour locations next to windmills because of the height, but also windmills need
>> good internet connection themselves
>>
>> However did they manage before internet?
>>
No idea. Automated, with more limited management ? Radio?
I saw in a museum a demonstration of remote control of a non-manned diesel power station in the sixties by means of signals using dial-up phones.
Presumably a bank of windmills can now be controlled individually. I've often noticed that they aren't all necessarily turning together, I assumed because of national power needs.
But the pole our new wi-fi comes from is on a hill that only has two small windmills, yet they need internet there.
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>> >> >> They favour locations next to windmills because of the height, but also windmills
>> need
>> >> good internet connection themselves
>> >>
>> >> However did they manage before internet?
>> >>
>>
>> No idea. Automated, with more limited management ? Radio?
Firstly you have to assume the OP is talking about wind turbines NOT 16th century flour grinding technology. You will notice that large scale wind generation has grown up with modern telecoms, basically because there are thousands of the things and they need monitoring and managing which can only be done remotely. Ironically they don't need huge bandwidth to run or monitor, in fact you could easily manage all the turbines in the uk with the bandwidth of my domestic Virgin Media cable. (if they were all in my garden)
What they do need is always on rugged reliable comms to very hostile and inaccessible locations, which usually means fibre, fibre which by its nature has an excess of bandwidth. A link laid with the aid of grants and the fact that cable need to be run to it anyway. Sometimes they even use the power feed cables as a data link.
As far as the OP goes, would be interested how his microwave internet performs in heavy rain. It wouldn't be any good for me, because your uplink is usually via the same old slow physical openreach infrastructure.
Last edited by: Zero on Wed 11 Apr 18 at 11:51
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>> Firstly you have to assume the OP is talking about wind turbines
I hadn't (obviously). I was thinking of a windmill in the old traditional sense. Like the one near Hungerford.
www.wiltonwindmill.co.uk/
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>> >> Firstly you have to assume the OP is talking about wind turbines
>>
>> I hadn't (obviously).
I must admit I hadn't either.
However, the controñ systems within the turbines, the level of control, the amount of management and thw functionality have all changed over time depending on the technology available.
I cannot remember how long they've been mainstream. Ir was certainly the 80s and may have been the 70s.
Last edited by: No FM2R on Wed 11 Apr 18 at 14:16
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Many of the wind turbines in my area seem to be useless if it's not windy, useless if it is too windy and, in addition, seem to be regularly being repaired......
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>> Many of the wind turbines in my area seem to be useless if it's not
>> windy, useless if it is too windy and, in addition, seem to be regularly being
>> repaired......
The "useless" turbines are capable of generating 17% of our power requirements and on average chip in 12%. At half the cost per KWH of a nuclear power station.
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>>The "useless" turbines are capable of generating 17% of our power requirements and on average chip in 12%. At half the cost per KWH of a nuclear power station. >>
I'm aware of the contribution they contribute, even though one of those I mentioned as not always being in action is at my town's local Eco Centre!
I recall visiting a school on a remote Scottish island in the early 1990s where one nearby giant wind turbine served all the energy requirements for the premises.
My real gripe with them is that they are basically ugly and spoil the look of the countryside and coastal areas - there are banks of them off shore at Crosby beach, for instance, where they form a depressing background to Antony Gormley's Another Place and approaching or departing big cruise ships. Even more turbines are planned...:-(
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>> My real gripe with them is that they are basically ugly and spoil the look
>> of the countryside and coastal areas
>>
Damn sight less ugly/obtrusive than a ruddy great power station, it's probably one of the ways we will get electricity from now on, get used to it.
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Anything is more ugly than nothing.
But of all the power producing "somethings" we see, hear or know about, wind turbines seem the least offensive to me.
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>>...it's probably one of the ways we will get electricity from now on, get used to it. >>
I've been, despite your sarcasm, used "to it" for more than 20 years.
It doesn't alter the fact, in my opinion, that many areas of the UK's beautiful countryside and coastal areas are spoiled by these ungainly structures.
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>> I've been, despite your sarcasm, used "to it" for more than 20 years.
>>
It was fairly gentle sarcasm
Wind turbine & solar panels in countryside and coastal areas are there because that is where they are most efficient and they are the current preferred options for low cost / low pollution electricity.
Whether we like them or not they are inevitable.
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So not *that* sort of banter then?
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We have two massive farms of them (Morecambe bay) and thousands more are planned, they are 12miles offshore, and can only really be seen on a clear day (of which there are not many), there are also several banks of half a dozen or more perched on the hill and fell tops around the area, these are eyesores! and do spoil the countryside. All in all, they can bang as many of them as they want out at sea for me, best place for em!
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>> Many of the wind turbines in my area seem to be useless if it's not windy
The ones round our way also have fields of solar panels nearby, presumably as back up for when there is no wind.
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>> >> Many of the wind turbines in my area seem to be useless if it's
>> not windy
>>
>> The ones round our way also have fields of solar panels nearby, presumably as back
>> up for when there is no wind.
Surprisingly the solar power farms are much more effective when its windy, the panels work better when cooled by the wind.
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>> I cannot remember how long they've been mainstream. Ir was certainly the 80s and may
>> have been the 70s.
Wind power? Early 80s or 70s mainstream? in the UK? nah. no way. The odd one or two, but certainly not mainstream. It really all kicked off in the early 2000's
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>>The odd one or two, but certainly not mainstream. >>
There were dozens of them in Yorkshire and plenty in Scotland in the early 199s...:-)
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You wait till they build a giant wave generator across the ribble, From Blackpool to Formby I'm told. Then you'll have something to moan about/
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A combination of solar power and wind power means that for the northern half of Chile electricity wholesale price frequently reaches $0.
But can you believe that Chile has *no* national grid.
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Would you put pylons and high voltage wires up across earthquake central?
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>> But can you believe that Chile has *no* national grid.
>>
Nor does the United States as such. The half dozen or so regions have little interconnectivity
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>> You wait till they build a giant wave generator across the ribble, From Blackpool to
>> Formby I'm told. Then you'll have something to moan about. >>
News to me other than part of a study some years ago about coastal erosion over the years (Formby, for instance, has lost almost 400 yards of land in recent years).
Your suggestion would also involved the extremities of the Mersey Estuary as well as the Ribble Estuary if it's true - however the silting up of the Ribble Estuary and off the Southport area was largely due to the ceasing of dredging the estuary, closing Preston Docks and also the removal of sand from the Horse Bank off the resort.
Perhaps this is more relevant from back in 2014 which, to me, would make sense both practically and economically:
www.fleetwoodtoday.co.uk/news/business/ribble-gateway-plans-revealed-1-6750038
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>>
>> As far as the OP goes, would be interested how his microwave internet performs in
>> heavy rain. It wouldn't be any good for me, because your uplink is usually via
>> the same old slow physical openreach infrastructure.
>>
It doesn't make any difference. Nor does thick fog. Even when I can't see the end of the garden let alone the mast and the windmills, the connection is still up to speed.
Also, there's no overhead line to be stuck by lightning or pick up a flash surge. We've had that problem in the past - computer damaged or router taken out by a thunderstorm miles away and a surge transmitted down the line. More recently the ethernet filter was damaged - the phone still worked but the internet side of the filter was damaged.
We've a surge protector for the computer and the router mains power supplies, so the new set-up should be bomb proof - allegedly :)
I don't understand your reference to the Openreach connection. At our end it's a totally different set-up, just a dish and a router. No landline connection necessary. Do you mean at the windmills they still are partly dependent on their own landline?
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>> I don't understand your reference to the Openreach connection. At our end it's a totally
>> different set-up, just a dish and a router. No landline connection necessary. Do you mean
>> at the windmills they still are partly dependent on their own landline?
You need a data link up and down. The down needs to be faster for streaming of course but you still need an up link.
Its cheap and easy to include a microwave receiver in a home set up, much more expensive and involved to have a microwave transmitter as well, so in a semi urban environment where an existing BT landline is in place the link is usually split uplink via landline, faster downlink via Microwave.
Of course in the middle of nowhere, its microwave up and down.
And stop calling the windMILLS, I doubt there is any milling going on at your Microwave site (which I guess is on the hills near the old Marconi radar) the poor lags on here are getting confused expecting windy miller to be on the doorstep.
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I used to have a girlfriend called Wendy Miller. There were no references possible that she had not heard before or that made her smile.
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I was going to post the vid of Windy Miller getting drunk, but this one diverted me
Trump-ton
www.youtube.com/watch?v=fudSCU1-U9g
Love the new names of the fire crew
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Very good. Did Windy Miller get drunk - don't recall that from my childhood.
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I know some at work with a name that sounded like Tina Turner. Her parents must have thought it amusing. As soon as she was old enough she changed her surname.
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>>
>>
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>> And stop calling the windMILLS, I doubt there is any milling going on
>>
No, I won't. It's a time-honoured extension of use of the old word.
Think Holland, think windmills? Their main purpose is to pump water out of the low-lying areas back into the drains and canals. The same in the Fens and Norfolk.
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>> No, I won't. It's a time-honoured extension of use of the old word.
>>
>> Think Holland, think windmills? Their main purpose is to pump water out of the low-lying
>> areas back into the drains and canals. The same in the Fens and Norfolk.
There is no low lying water on top your nearest vantage point, and the fens converted to steam driven pumps during the industrial revolution.
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Precisely my point - the name lives on, and now has wider applications.
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I don't think anyone calls wind turbines windmills. They are two different things hence different names.
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>> I don't think anyone calls wind turbines windmills.
Cliff does ;)
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Hope for rural Broadband - VxFan
