An OpenAPI code generation framework for TypeScript called Skmtc (pronounced like "schematic")
It handles the complexities of parsing OpenAPI and rendering output code, while providing the end user with full control over generator code via string templates.
Imagine something like React but for code generation where each code generator can compose its own output using the outputs of other generators.
According to his biopic he was originally slated to play Major Kong as well, but struggled to make the character work. Which is just as well since Slim Pickens is of the great highlights in the film
How so? Would love to get more info. I would have expected car parks to be a decent place for solar panels. Close to existing infrastructure, easy access, provides shade and no loss of habitat.
Exactly. Most airport parking lots charge extra for covered parking - parking lots could continue charging the premium and also make money generating power. Sometimes the free market needs a swift kick up the backside to do the right thing, it seems. (edit: s/Mostly/Most)
Indeed - according to the article, the law requires a lot of parking lot surface area to be covered. Not necessarily by one gigantic roof, just as long as solar panels are blocking direct sunlight.
Covering parking lots requires a scaffolding structure to hold the panels. The cost of this structure is probably higher than the panels.
A much better plan would be mandating all large building roofs to be covered by panels unless unsuitable. You could literally double the amount of panels for the same $$.
All the warehouses, shopping malls, government buildings and factories is a very large amount of space.
Close to power substations? Do they scale when you need more? Do we really want to mount our solar panels up on 20' poles? When it requires maintenance, do we shut down the parking lot?
It's clearly not optimal, not nearly.
Folks I know it's sad that every solar project that occurs to the layman, is not always a good idea. But don't blame the messenger.
Places with large parking lots usually also consume a lot of power and need a properly dimensioned connection to the grid anyways. And they will likely cover their own demand with these solar installations before they send any surplus to the grid.
Exactly. Those buildings next to the parking lot are another big problem - shade. In many cases the panels will be in shade part of every day. But Hey! the government says you got to put them up anyway.
This is a load of govt interference, down to virtue signalling and little else.
> I'm not really sure though that energy prices can be controlled by govts.
They cannot set the price, but they can set the market mechanism which produces the prices. The auction mechanism used in UK and the order in which producers with higher CO2 output get switched off first means that electricity price is set by gas powered electricity producers. Govt can and is looking at updating that auction mechanism to decouple electricity prices from gas prices.
While storing electricity is very hard at grid scale at the moment, another approach to solve the intermittency problem is using interconnectors. By connecting to other grids using uncorrelated energy sources, we can balance energy supply and demand across space rather than across time with storage.
I believe the idea is that it solves two problems simultaneously, using excess wind when it’s available and making our domestic gas supplies “greener”.
The vast majority of uk homes have gas powered central heating (hot water radiators), there is no good route forward to upgrade/replace all of this infrastructure to make it “green”. You can’t economically run a hot water central heating system using an electric heat pump, the required temperatures are too high, so you either need to rip it out and replace the whole system with a modern one or at least either replace all the radiators with underfloor heating or masive wall mounted radiators (very expensive for the 10s millions of homes, this isn’t just a new boiler).
A hybrid hydrogen/natural gas or synthetic gas is a way to go green but keep the existing infrastructure either with a new boiler or hopefully minor component changes.
So while it may not technically be “best usage” in the academic sense, it could be argued that it is a sensible use economically for the UK.
If you have to use electricity to produce hydrogen it is more efficient to instead use that electricity directly for hot water and a heat pump for space heating. There is no need to 'rip it out and replace the whole system' to use a heat pump; an air to air heat pump as used in many Scandinavian homes can be fitted at much lower cost without disturbing the existing central heating at all.
I don't understand why heat pump solutions in the UK are so expensive. An air to air heat pump from Samsung can be had for a thousand pounds and installation for another five hundred here in Norway; see https://www.elkjop.no/product/hjem-og-husholdning/oppvarming... for instance.
This is rated for room areas up to 100 m2 so plenty enough for the average UK home. Buy two if you want the upstairs heated separately.
> I don't understand why heat pump solutions in the UK are so expensive. An air to air heat pump from Samsung can be had for a thousand pounds and installation for another five hundred here in Norway
Hot air heating is missing in discussions in the UK. I don't know why; I speculate that it's because it got a bad reputation in the 1980s when it was fitted to new build houses and is perceived as ineffective. Certainly the conversations I've had with people all go "I ripped out the hot air system and replaced it with (conventional) hot water radiators and a gas boiler and the house is toasty warm". The draughty nature of UK housing may also be a factor.
What's the situation in Norway and other countries? Is hot air heating widely used? In what kinds of properties do you use air to air heat pumps?
> What's the situation in Norway and other countries? Is hot air heating widely used?
Central heating of any kind is rare in Norway. There is widespread use of underfloor heating (either water borne or electric) in bathrooms. Its fairly common in living rooms too but definitely not the majority.
Most people use electric panel heaters and a wood burner. In the past we used quite a lot of paraffin burnt in a pot burner in the centre of the house which could keep most of my 130 m2 house warmer than we wanted. That's no longer allowed so I burn wood (compressed wood waste from sawmills).
> In what kinds of properties do you use air to air heat pumps?
All kinds of free standing houses, terraced houses. My next door neighbour has two, one for the ground floor and another for the bedrooms in the floor above.
The only thing holding me back from getting a heat pump is that the wiring in my house is not up to it so it would be a substantial extra cost to get that upgraded. That's not a problem for most UK houses or recently built Norwegian ones.
In this small town of 6000 people I think that probably one in four of the detached and semi-detached houses have air to air heat pumps.
US single family homes are, by a large margin, primarily heated via the central air system (the same ductwork that supplies cold air in summer).
My experience with both is that I prefer central air heat. That said, they will perform worse in a drafty house- air is a very poor carrier and storage medium for heat compared to water, so if you have a room with a draft away from your thermostat, it'll get colder faster; a radiator in the room would essentially act as a heat bank.
> There is no need to 'rip it out and replace the whole system' to use a heat pump; an air to air heat pump as used in many Scandinavian homes can be fitted at much lower cost without disturbing the existing central heating at all.
I understood that heat pumps work more efficiently in homes that are a) well insulated, and b) where the heating system is designed to work at lower temperatures (bigger radiators/underfloor heating and appropriate pipes). Whether or not a & b are must-haves or nice to have I'm not 100% sure about - I guess it depends.
Homes that use gas in the UK typically have a gas boiler that provides both hot water for heating and domestic use (taps). They heat the water on demand, there is no facility for storing the water. Heat pumps as we have now cannot be used like that, they will slowly extract heat from the source (e.g. the air) and use it to heat up water in a buffer tank (typically a few hundred litres) - so retrofitting would mean not just replacing the boiler, but finding space for a large water tank.
A better alternative is thermal batteries, which can charge when electricity is cheap. This has actually been around for a long time in the UK as storage heaters, but now systems are coming to market that can be used to replace traditional boilers and provide hot water:
I looked into Sunamp last year as they sounded idea for us when redoing our heating. They seem to have had many teething problems, including the control circuit boards having fundamental problems, and people having the battery contents expand and warp the cases.
A typical English¹ house has several rooms, and is heated by a central boiler and a pump circulating hot water through radiators.
Converting the house to air-based heating would require several such units, or else some other type of unit and pipes to move the air to the various rooms.
¹ Used intentionally, I know electric resistive heating is/was more common in parts of Scotland.
A lot of both Norwegian and UK homes have open plan main floors.
Just leave all the internal doors open. The average family home in the UK is less than 100 m2 all told. A pair of air to air heat pumps would easily heat the two floors.
And of course the UK really should insulate houses better.
From what I understand that does not really work. For example, you can't have jet fuel manufacturing based on negative prices, because you need to have high utilisation rate for manufacturing equipment itself. It's not economically viable to have that equipment sitting idle during times of normal electricity prices.
If the primary cost is the machines you are correct. If the primary cost is energy, then low energy prices and extra machines makes sense.
Office work will ignore energy prices in general. Jet fuel manufacturing will if at all possible shut down when energy prices are high. If it isn't possible they will do some form of energy storage to cover high energy prices times.
Statistical analysis would show regions where production is viable for x days per year and to be honest, a jet fuel manufacturer could just recognize this energy abundance and build its own grid and invest in solving these problems as a means of optimization / investment / market strategy....
Depends where you are. London is starting to get some good cycling lanes and some junctions are having traffic rerouted to make it safer for cyclists.
Sadly in many other places cycling only really works for confident riders. Lots of drivers are either unaware of cyclists or downright aggressive. I would have near misses on a weekly basis. Things are getting better but very slowly.
And in our other cities it's still way cheaper (and socially acceptable) to drive in from the suburbs and park.
There are car parks literally 200m from the centre of Birmingham where you can park all day for less than 10 pounds, and cheaper still nearby.
Things are starting to change (oddly during COVID) by addition of bus gates, but they're making very slow progress. We've already delayed and diluted our congestion charge multiple times.
It handles the complexities of parsing OpenAPI and rendering output code, while providing the end user with full control over generator code via string templates.
Imagine something like React but for code generation where each code generator can compose its own output using the outputs of other generators.
https://github.com/skmtc/skmtc - https://skm.tc