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Ask Slashdot: Minimizing Oil and Gas Dependency In a Central European City?
An anonymous reader writes I live in a big city in central Europe. As most of you know from recent news, most of Europe's (and quite a bit of China's) gas supply comes from Russia and is very likely to be cut off several times during the next few winters (China's time will come in later years). What many might not know is that not just our natural gas supply, but also our petrol ('gas' for the Americans in the audience) often comes partly from Russia and some of our electricity comes from gas powered stations. Most of our leaders, at least in Germany and Hungary, are in bed with the Russians and likely won't do anything about fuel security. I live in an building with a south-facing roof and I own the roof space but I don't have enough land here to put a wind turbine or something similar on. Can anyone make good suggestions for ways to cut down my dependence on unreliable power supplies? Extra points for environmentalism, but I am even willing to pay more to be sure the heating is there in winter and my server keeps running.
Most of leaders, at least in Germany and Hungary, are in bed with the Russians and likely won't do anything about fuel security.
Don't know much about Hungary (*), but if you really think that Merkel is "in bed with the Russians" you have bigger problems than worrying about your fuel security.
Anyway, oil dependence is essentially transport based; more specifically, private car use. So cut or reduce your dependence on that. You live in a multi-storey building of which you control only part - some kind of apartment block - so probably a fairly densely populated area. That makes it simple: If you currently drive a car to work, stop doing that. If you're really lazy, you could get a motorbike or scooter, drastically reducing your dependence; if you're not that lazy start cycling. With a bit of practice, a 20-30K commute on a bike is really not hard, and you'll save money on gym fees. That's oil dependance sorted.
Natural gas is trickier if you don't own the building (or at least apartment). If you can, you should probably install solar panels on the roof - not for your own use, as such, but to take advantage of the feed-in tariffs. And then buy an electric convection heater so you can heat your apartment if the gas gets cut off. And maybe buy a good sleeping bag or extra duvet. That won't save you from a catastrophic meltdown - you'd need a wood burning stove, a cabin in the woods, and a seriously unhealthy dose of paranoia(**) for that, but it will make short outages of gas a lot more comfortable.
(*) Feel free to sing this comment to the tune of Sam Cooke's "Wonderful World" :)
(**) You seem to already have 1 of those three.
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When they are sitting in the cold dark and see your lights, you have scant minutes before they kick down your door.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
As far as solar goes,
OP is asking about Central Europe during winter. Solar is not an option - certainly not for backup.
Wind turbines are not economical on a small scale, and not reliable enough as a backup.
Backup power and heating is a common problem with well-know solutions:
generator, oil or LPG heater with stored fuel, improved insulation.
Heat needs may be reduced temporarily by covering windows, closing off unused rooms, taping gaps, lowering thermostat.
The government really should be building nuclear plants, and gas ones that can switch to pulverised coal or oil if needed, with large stockpiles near the site.
He didn't and here's why:
sizeof is an operator, not a function, because the ANSI C standard says so.
As consequences:
The operand of sizeof can be a bare cast, sizeof (int), instead of an object expression.
The parentheses are unnecessary: int a; printf("%d\n", sizeof a); is perfectly fine. They're often seen, firstly because they're needed as part of a type cast expression, and secondly because sizeof has very high precedence, so sizeof a + b isn't the same as sizeof (a+b). But they aren't part of the invocation of sizeof, they're part of the operand.
You can't take the address of sizeof.
The expression which is the operand of sizeof is not evaluated at runtime (sizeof a++ does not modify a).
The expression which is the operand of sizeof can have any type except void, or function types. Indeed, that's kind of the point of sizeof.
A function would differ on all those points. There are probably other differences between a function and a unary operator, but I think that's enough to show why sizeof could not be a function even if there was a reason to want it to be.
(credit: Steve Jessop at StackOverflow).
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
There is no good solution.
Solar panels and a battery bank will keep you in minimal electricity. You can run a tablet, a laptop and internet router plus perhaps charge your flashlights. A larger installation might run a 12-volt microwave or 12-volt freezer.
As for heat, I suggest many layers of clothing and lots of well insulated quilts. Hot water bottles were once popular and will be again.
Cooking? If you can get to the roof, then buy a few bags of coal for the winter and a heater than can handle coal (not a standard wood stove) and cook up there. Coal is fairly cheap, compact and generates a good amount of heat. With coal, you can boil water for the aforementioned hot water bottles.
Coal will also kill you with carbon monoxide if you try burning it inside the house. Try and avoid that.
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Highly disagree, OP sounds like a ripe candidate for solar water, not to be confused with photovoltaics. Solar thermal is highly efficient and pretty cheap in comparison.
A modest setup would need only three hours a day sun just to supply hot water for daily use, and a bigger setup or more time for supplying hot water for heat (radiant heat using water is extremely common there).
He's asking for heat and not electricity per se, solar water is ideal for that and many times cheaper than PV for the same results.