Life goes on - Winter 2025

Here sunrise is 7:47am and sunset at 4:55pm. Just about 9 hours of daylight. On a work day I leave in the dark and get home just as the sun goes down. Doesn’t leave much to get things done outside.

12 Likes

It’s the time of year when headlamps, ummm, shine :slightly_smiling_face:

9 Likes

Haha, that’s funny.
However, over the year hours of daylight even out -BUT- even if that’s the case “bad weather” is more common in Europe. I’ve shared these maps earlier.
No wonder we’re a bit reserved in the Nordics. Small talk is often translated dead talk and most of us avoid it at any cost :smile:

8 Likes

Jo, you are in the green area? We just in the blue , and in Croatia right in the red (good, no work then)
But compared to the US we have bad weather indeed.

6 Likes

Hi J.O.
For the USofA unfortunately this is a too simplified terrible map.
Take the NW corner of the continental US with having the whole of Washington State all the same-same. NOT accurate at all.
Most “big-picture” maps and analysis get this wrong.
I did find one map on a third party site where the map had originated from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory that did get the west/east severe divide right. And then I assume other finer scale gradialts across the US better.
Nope. Could not cut and paste from the third party site. The NREL to download required a membership . . . .

Anyone interested search this up.

Steve Unruh

10 Likes

This what you were mentioning Steve? Yeah, with J.O.'s map you don’t see the temperate rainforest in the west and desert in the east of Oregon/Washington. But it is generally accurate overall.

12 Likes

That’s right Joep. If the bump to the right represents the butt - the Stockholm area, I’m in the center of Sweden’s waist.
I notice that if you move just a little closer to the water you could be in a green stripe too.

Steve, I realise the resolution is not that good in my map. My point was Europe has overall way less sunshine compared to America. I guess it has a lot to do with the Gulf stream pumping warm water up the US east coast towards England and the Scandinavian peninsula. The steamy stream will cause a lot of condensation up here. Would you believe even the Norwegian coastline has areas defined rainforests.

9 Likes

7,5 kWh per day means 3,75 kWh produced by common panel with 2 m² active surface, 25% efficiency and 500 Wp power.

It still leads to only 31% capacity factor which is terrible for utility competing on low margin commodity market. If cost to achieve dispatchable delivery should be accounted, one cannot restrain from wondering why still so many people believe in solar future.

7 Likes

For what you wanted to convey J.O. the European map was fine. I was not so surprised by the far upper European conditions. I was very surprised by the clearly six zones in France.
Northern Pacific Ocean feeds up a same-same equitrorial warmed waters to primarily British Columbia and southeast Alaska too.

The NREL energy map MartinS. put up can be clicked on enlarged showing even greater details. There I was surprised by the overcast lake effect areas east of the Great Lakes in Pennsylvania and upstate New York.

Kamil it is not so surprising that True Believers, believe their sincere earnest beliefs can defy laws of thermal dynamics and physics.
Beliefs can affect personal internal biological, and external social, dynamics.

The American SW has been called the Saudi Arabia of direct solar energy. Delivering that energy harvested and converted far distances 3X of western European distances is where I-wanna’ Believers fall flat. Believing that if ALL home rooftops were mandated colored white would be best across the whole of the United States was one of those defy energy laws foolishnesses. Here where I live dark rooftops are overall year around better.
Local evolved choice will always be the best systems.

Steve Unruh

8 Likes

Steve, there’s another difference between those maps. Martin’s map shows intensity, described as kWh/m2/day. Latitude will make a huge difference then. Where I live for example, the angel of the sun at noon, at winter solstice, is only 8 degrees. Even if absorbing surfaces are close to vertical the sunshine is weaker due to the thicker atmosphere it has to penetrate. My map is only about hours of sunshine (blue skies). Just saying.

6 Likes

“Confirmation Bias”?
Confirmation Bias Defined: "The tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one’s existing beliefs or theories.**
—One reason for my highlighting this “cognitive bias” issue is that I hear so many people citing one or two anecdotes about an issue, making the assumption that those few anecdotes represent the majority of cases that support their view.
Maybe they are right, maybe not. But how would they know if they hadn’t done objective research?

9 Likes

Interesting those maps, it seems i live in the separate blue spot on Sweden? Im not surprised, it’s always cooler and grey skies and rain and snow where i live… :smile:

10 Likes

Yesterday something white and wet and cold fell from the sky


Home from work.

This morning, i’ve really been missing this, scraping the ice of the windshield… :snowman_with_snow:

19 Likes

It was cold and foggy here this week, but yesterday and today it was warm and sunny. This afternoon I went to look for tractor tires for my friend. By the way, I visited the man and looked at his vehicle…

20 Likes

That’s a wonderful feeling, isn’t it? :grin:

Congratulations Tone! Finally another woodburner :+1:

11 Likes

The man’s name is Primož, he has had this gasifier installed on his UAZ for 9 years and uses it often. He said that it has a hot zone with a diameter of 20 cm, actually a piece of fireclay chimney pipe, the gas outlet is down through the grate and to the side above the grate - classic, and then it has an integrated heat exchanger for preheating the air. It has no condensation zone, so the gas is more humid and there is also some tar in the system, well, Primož says that this does not harm this engine, he just has to wiggle the gas mixing flaps when starting.

24 Likes

the easiest would be remove the ice on the windshield with warm woodgas with a rubber hose (from a bit distance) during gasifier heating up…??also the fingers get not so cold…

7 Likes

seems woodgas cars have future…one more in slovenia…

11 Likes

I got a question for you guys that run cars on woodgas – how do you handle safety inspections? Do you get pushback? I know I would get a really hairy eyeball here in Chile. They failed me once because the pin holding the trailer ball bracket in my hitch had a bent nail in it as I had lost the retaining clip. They didn’t like the “permanent” nature of the steel projecting from hitch.

10 Likes

Hi Martin, in Sweden there is old inspection rules for woodgas vehicles, these are from ww2, and is renewed when a “fuel crisis” has been coming (1953, and 1974)
My Chevrolet is inspected as a twin fuel, woodgas or gasoline, my Volvo is only inspected as a “ordinary car”, without woodgas equipment, if i get pulled over i have to deal with it then, no doubts who is knowing the woodgas regulations best… the worst thing that can happen is a inspection order.

10 Likes