Muhendis

In a word. Covid. Many companies lost a lot of money due to lower retail footfall. Those losses can only be replaced by jacking up prices. Public companies have no choice in this because of maintaining share value. Smaller businesses have possibly borrowed from banks etc and need to repay ASAP.

There are all sorts of different "inverters" to choose from. I placed quotation marks on the word because, for contributors on this forum, the inverter encompasses an off the shelf all-singing-all-dancing easy but often expensive solution to solar power. Inside the "inverter" will be a charge controller or two to which the solar panel array is connected. Output from the charge controller is suitable for charging batteries (generally 48v) and feeding power to the inverter. Some "inverters" can accept input from PEA et.al. for the purpose of running the loads when there is not enough sun and maybe charge the batteries. Also some inverters can export power to PEA et. al. via this connection. The output of the inverter section is 220 or 230vac and capable of delivering power to the house electrical circuits. The inverter section will be capable of short duration overloads of double the normal power for several hundred milliseconds. So. The inverter consists of three sections all in one box. 1. Charge controller(s) 2. PEA et.al. input/output. 3. Inverter to convert DC charge controller output to 220/230v. There are other ways of achieving the same with separate units which could cost a lot less.

Bearing in mind that all politicians are deeply involved in money for one reason or another, I would suggest they have an excellent understanding of how an independant Bank Of Thailand works. I would suggest it is in the interests of many of them to try and take control for personal enrichment rather than for the betterment of the country.

In Turkey gambling is not allowed except in some hotels. The clientele have to show their passports to enter the casino. Locals are not allowed in.

With Visa free trips to the EU Schengen countries coming up we may soon find ourselves handling Euros instead of Baht and satan Satang..........

You could get a job in Thai Tax dept any day thinking like that. ☹️

That magical word "crackdown" is what it's all about. Between each crackdown, time and motion ceases to exist. Police are in a state of limbo.

What makes you think planning is involved? It's knee jerk stuff as always, Next will be import duty which is currently only collected on goods over 1,000 Baht

Many of us are relieved to know that.

Yes, it's a crazy system that allows each person to have only one address.

A totally insignificant update on the new solar panels. Last night I had the bedroom aircon. running all night. At around 10:00 am I had a look in the ESS room and, to my amazement the batteries were showing 100% full. I was pleased but not to put too fine a point on it, The charge controllers are from China so that would be a Chinese 100% Be that as it may. The batteries and solar panels seem to be performing almost as well as a Pattaya bar girl although I have to say solar has fewer options (or so I'm lead to believe). I needed to do a bit of rice milling today. My mill motor start current takes quite a big chunk of electricity for a few tens of milliseconds or there abouts, so I normally switch over to PEA to do my milling. Today I forgot............. I remembered about 10 minutes after I had started the milling machine. Well I didn't go into a complete panic but the thought crossed my mind that the milling machine didn't awt to have started. I quickly switched over to PEA and carried on The new solar panels gave me more than the old ones did that's for sure. A quick mention about the mill motor. It's a single phase with start and run circuits and something in the order of three horses which is 2.24 kW when running under normal load conditions. I don't think I will be relying on the solar to run it though because in normal use, the motor occasionally stalls and when it does it is for more time than the start duration.

Hom Mali (jasmine) rice at 1 year old is good. At 2 years it is a bit dodgy, At 10 years it is dead and fit only for chickens. The army is absolutely right to demand quality control.

All this has absolutely nothing to do with the beach. You might just as well include walking street in the list if "party and lifestyle" are the measure of how good the sand is.

What's the difference between massage and physiotherapy? Quite a few years back, I had pulled a muscle in my back in the shoulder blade to spinal waist area. On Jomtien beach, I had a massage specifically for that problem and the woman was brilliant. I came away from that treatment with the muscle problem completely fixed. Now for the fly in that particular ointment. As a goodbye gift she grabbed my right arm and bent it to an extremes position which hurt. Apart from that it was an hour well spent.

Yeah. There are procedures to control this sort of work. The site was under commission so commissioning procedures should have been in place but I guess things were a bit lax. The cabinet should have been locked off when under powered conditions. It wasn't so the guy assumed it was safe. The guy was lucky to survive. Apparently there was an arc which occurred as the meter probe approached the contact point.

When a company that manufactures solar equipment first starts up, development and tooling costs are seriously scary high. It will take that company many months if not years to get their products to market. So, to recover their costs, these companies have to sell at grossly elevated prices. This if fine and normal especially if competition is thin on the ground. After a time development and tooling costs are recovered and production becomes streamlined. Profit margins are huge (1000% is not unusual at this stage) but then in comes the competition and down go market prices. Market forces prevail and the likes of you and I get happier and happier. Natural events like covid tend to chuck a spanner in the works which causes prices to rise later which enables companies to recover their pandemic losses. But that is normally temporary in the world of technology and prices can get back to normal fairly quickly. Once again, market forces take care of that.

I agree with this idea it is something that could be done with a little support from the national government. We are a village of 200 or so houses. If each house were to generate something like 8kW AC this power could be connected to a local, village grid. Nighttime power could come from each house battery bank of 36kW. In effect, the village would be it's own mini grid. Another idea could be to have a dedicated area for a solar farm complete with industrial size generator of 1.6MW, a container full of flow batteries and a few powerful inverters. Never gonna happen though. The government is the majority shareholder in PEA and likes to see massive Mega bucks coming in every week.

Ha Ha Ha It does seem like some sort of fanaticism but in my case I went off grid because my house was built 1km from the nearest electric post. This meant having a temporary or construction supply. This temporary supply voltage fluctuated down to below 180v as the village woke up every morning and if someone decided to do a bit of arc welding then we could well have been down to 50v. Solar was the only option worth looking at for me because I have a certain expertise in things electronic. Good job I went solar too because I had to wait 7 years from application, for a permanent PEA supply. The permanent supply is about 4 Baht/unit whereas the temporary supply was about 8 Baht/unit. I still have my PEA connected but it was relegated to backup once I had my solar up and running.

The figure of 150% is what was quoted some years ago when this first came up however your comment has me wondering if that may be the figure for visiting expats who are looking for treatment by the NHS before returning to their adopted home. What is the NHS surcharge in financial terms?

Good question. I guess someone important enough decided it was worthy of pulling apart officially by the government influencers (backbenchers to you and me). Some of the comments highlight the fact that something like 70% of the UK population live on less than the £38,500 minimum income limit for migrants, so why are migrants required to have more? I think I'm going to answer my own question. Immigrants need more money to pay 150% of any NHS treatment they may need irrespective of any income from working in the UK.

If you mean discussed on this forum then you really should have a look at the link. The link is the Government debate on the subject. Clearly this is a wrong assumption but never mind. The Government has debated it now anyway and that is what should be of greater importance.

There is a UK Government petition that I recently signed, which highlights the proposed future costs of non-UK citizens to live in the UK together with their spouse. The petition cleared the minimum number respondents which caused the Government to debate the issue. Here is the full debate which, in my opinion and if nothing else, highlights the Government's lack of forethought and consideration. It is also notable that nothing is mentioned of the financial improvements that the UK Inland Revenue might expect from an increased number of working immigrants. https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2024-04-23/debates/197A4BF5-2D70-4087-9ECC-479F740A7C10/PartnerAndSpousalVisasMinimumIncome

Ta.

I am just a bit confused about the schengen visa. Perhaps someone can clarify I thought schengen was a visa agreement to visit countries which are part of the EU. Does that now include Switzerland?

OK I'm jealous.