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Moving to all Electric

Making your money go further
daveh
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Re: Moving to all Electric

#387210

Postby daveh » February 16th, 2021, 3:29 pm

fisher wrote:
AF62 wrote:Obviously you are happy with yours and you expressed surprise that more people were not using them. Hence the debate on that point which seems to be that the answer is that they are more expensive to run than gas fired boilers, more expensive to buy, and don't work well with how most people want to use heating systems.

Without significant subsidies to reduce the cost of ownership or banning the alternatives to force people to use them, it is difficult to see why most people would choose to use one other than from a ideological viewpoint.


I said that I was surprised they were not fitted more often in new build homes. There are a lot of bespoke new homes being built in the villages in the area where I live. There is no mains gas supply in these villages and yet very few new builds have heat pumps. The last few I have seen built are using LPG Boilers and few have underfloor heating. I guess this is a cost cutting exercise by the developer rather than considering the longer term economic case for the purchaser.


Around me (in Aberdeenshire) there is a local bespoke builder and (almost) all his houses are built to passive haus standards with heat pumps, underfloor heating and often solar power and battery storage it seems to be the way to go.

AF62
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Re: Moving to all Electric

#387224

Postby AF62 » February 16th, 2021, 4:33 pm

daveh wrote:
fisher wrote:
AF62 wrote:Obviously you are happy with yours and you expressed surprise that more people were not using them. Hence the debate on that point which seems to be that the answer is that they are more expensive to run than gas fired boilers, more expensive to buy, and don't work well with how most people want to use heating systems.

Without significant subsidies to reduce the cost of ownership or banning the alternatives to force people to use them, it is difficult to see why most people would choose to use one other than from a ideological viewpoint.


I said that I was surprised they were not fitted more often in new build homes. There are a lot of bespoke new homes being built in the villages in the area where I live. There is no mains gas supply in these villages and yet very few new builds have heat pumps. The last few I have seen built are using LPG Boilers and few have underfloor heating. I guess this is a cost cutting exercise by the developer rather than considering the longer term economic case for the purchaser.


Around me (in Aberdeenshire) there is a local bespoke builder and (almost) all his houses are built to passive haus standards with heat pumps, underfloor heating and often solar power and battery storage it seems to be the way to go.


For a bespoke builder perhaps; for a mass-market builder certainly not. The only solar I have seen installed on new properties around here is a token panel installed on each social housing property - presumably to enable some virtue signalling boast.

swill453
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Re: Moving to all Electric

#387227

Postby swill453 » February 16th, 2021, 4:40 pm

A bunch of new Cala homes built near me all have solar panels on the roof and "Mixergy" gas/electric hot water systems. (https://www.mixergy.co.uk/)

(Central Scotland, prices around £700,000, quite a lot for here).

Scott.

PhaseThree

Re: Moving to all Electric

#387230

Postby PhaseThree » February 16th, 2021, 4:58 pm

swill453 wrote:A bunch of new Cala homes built near me all have solar panels on the roof and "Mixergy" gas/electric hot water systems. (https://www.mixergy.co.uk/)

(Central Scotland, prices around £700,000, quite a lot for here).

Scott.


The Building Regs in Scotland are stricter than in the rest of the UK. My brother is currently building in Scotland and has found it difficult to reach the required efficiency target without some form of "Greenery". In his case it required a few solar panels on the roof and some better wall insulation.

Details here :-
https://www.buildenergy.co.uk/tips-and- ... nd-part-1/

Still not particularly onerous to pass to be honest but it does explain the sprouting of PV North of the border.

Nimrod103
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Re: Moving to all Electric

#387238

Postby Nimrod103 » February 16th, 2021, 5:46 pm

airbus330 wrote:WRT earlier comments about the Swansea Tidal Lagoon. This project is currently dead in the water (no pun intended!) and has been superseded by the rather more glamorous Dragon Island. I'd say it has about as much chance of happening as actually spotting its namesake flying over the Black Mountains. However, they are looking for seed money from investors. :lol:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-53224180


As I recall, when the Swansea tidal lagoon was first mooted, one the dodgy aspects of the whole plan was that the company proposing it also owned a large disused quarry on the outstandingly attractive cliffs of the Lizard Peninsula. The plan seemed to be as much about getting permission to reopen this quarry to get the stone for this (and presumably other) projects, as it was to generate electricity.

dspp
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Re: Moving to all Electric

#387243

Postby dspp » February 16th, 2021, 5:54 pm

AF62 wrote:
daveh wrote:
fisher wrote:
I said that I was surprised they were not fitted more often in new build homes. There are a lot of bespoke new homes being built in the villages in the area where I live. There is no mains gas supply in these villages and yet very few new builds have heat pumps. The last few I have seen built are using LPG Boilers and few have underfloor heating. I guess this is a cost cutting exercise by the developer rather than considering the longer term economic case for the purchaser.


Around me (in Aberdeenshire) there is a local bespoke builder and (almost) all his houses are built to passive haus standards with heat pumps, underfloor heating and often solar power and battery storage it seems to be the way to go.


For a bespoke builder perhaps; for a mass-market builder certainly not. The only solar I have seen installed on new properties around here is a token panel installed on each social housing property - presumably to enable some virtue signalling boast.


You presume wrong.

The solar panels are indeed token, but are actually there to allow the builder to skimp on insulation but still score enough points to meet the building regs. Given the opportunity you can rely on British builders to Jerry-build the cheapest possible crap every time.

- dspp

dealtn
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Re: Moving to all Electric

#387250

Postby dealtn » February 16th, 2021, 6:10 pm

dspp wrote:
AF62 wrote:
daveh wrote:
Around me (in Aberdeenshire) there is a local bespoke builder and (almost) all his houses are built to passive haus standards with heat pumps, underfloor heating and often solar power and battery storage it seems to be the way to go.


For a bespoke builder perhaps; for a mass-market builder certainly not. The only solar I have seen installed on new properties around here is a token panel installed on each social housing property - presumably to enable some virtue signalling boast.


You presume wrong.

The solar panels are indeed token, but are actually there to allow the builder to skimp on insulation but still score enough points to meet the building regs. Given the opportunity you can rely on British builders to Jerry-build the cheapest possible crap every time.

- dspp


And given the opportunity much of the British public will buy cheapest too. Either to maximise the size of house for the money, or because it is all they can afford.

dspp
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Re: Moving to all Electric

#387265

Postby dspp » February 16th, 2021, 7:04 pm

dealtn wrote:
dspp wrote:
AF62 wrote:
For a bespoke builder perhaps; for a mass-market builder certainly not. The only solar I have seen installed on new properties around here is a token panel installed on each social housing property - presumably to enable some virtue signalling boast.


You presume wrong.

The solar panels are indeed token, but are actually there to allow the builder to skimp on insulation but still score enough points to meet the building regs. Given the opportunity you can rely on British builders to Jerry-build the cheapest possible crap every time.

- dspp


And given the opportunity much of the British public will buy cheapest too. Either to maximise the size of house for the money, or because it is all they can afford.


Yes, which makes them stupid, because going the full mile to passivhaus is cheaper.

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Re: Moving to all Electric

#387271

Postby Mike4 » February 16th, 2021, 7:25 pm

dspp wrote:You presume wrong.

The solar panels are indeed token, but are actually there to allow the builder to skimp on insulation but still score enough points to meet the building regs. Given the opportunity you can rely on British builders to Jerry-build the cheapest possible crap every time.

- dspp


Or more accurately, you can rely on British builders to build to match consumer demand here. UK buyers care about the number of bedrooms and not a lot else as long as its cheap.

Offer a really well-built two bed house and a jerry-built three bed next to each other and the average British consumer will buy the three bed every time. In Germany it is reputedly different, Germans are particularly fussy about build quality and will seriously consider the well built two bed.

AF62
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Re: Moving to all Electric

#387300

Postby AF62 » February 16th, 2021, 9:26 pm

dspp wrote:
AF62 wrote:
daveh wrote:
Around me (in Aberdeenshire) there is a local bespoke builder and (almost) all his houses are built to passive haus standards with heat pumps, underfloor heating and often solar power and battery storage it seems to be the way to go.


For a bespoke builder perhaps; for a mass-market builder certainly not. The only solar I have seen installed on new properties around here is a token panel installed on each social housing property - presumably to enable some virtue signalling boast.


You presume wrong.

The solar panels are indeed token, but are actually there to allow the builder to skimp on insulation but still score enough points to meet the building regs. Given the opportunity you can rely on British builders to Jerry-build the cheapest possible crap every time.

- dspp


No, don't think so.

The development was the usual mix if social and private housing that the planning rules require these days, and all built by the same company.

Yet only the social housing had a single solar panel on each property.

It would seem rather unlikely the builders would play the rules by offsetting insulation for minimal solar on some properties and not do that on others, and would seem far more likely that those holding the purse strings for those particular properties called the shots.

airbus330
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Re: Moving to all Electric

#387317

Postby airbus330 » February 16th, 2021, 11:10 pm

Nimrod103 wrote:
airbus330 wrote:WRT earlier comments about the Swansea Tidal Lagoon. This project is currently dead in the water (no pun intended!) and has been superseded by the rather more glamorous Dragon Island. I'd say it has about as much chance of happening as actually spotting its namesake flying over the Black Mountains. However, they are looking for seed money from investors. :lol:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-53224180


As I recall, when the Swansea tidal lagoon was first mooted, one the dodgy aspects of the whole plan was that the company proposing it also owned a large disused quarry on the outstandingly attractive cliffs of the Lizard Peninsula. The plan seemed to be as much about getting permission to reopen this quarry to get the stone for this (and presumably other) projects, as it was to generate electricity.

Indeed, the skullduggery behind the scenes on any big project in Wales is pretty standard. WDA, or whatever it is called now, has a proven track record of failed investment. However, there are a few bright spots, a proposed large battery storage project (amusingly called Battri) with US backing popped up recently and would be good. Lets face it, all those windmills we have are producing lots of green leccy.

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Re: Moving to all Electric

#387320

Postby Mike4 » February 16th, 2021, 11:17 pm

airbus330 wrote:Lets face it, all those windmills we have are producing lots of green leccy.


But ARE they?

I drive past the monster fkcer by J11 on the M4 at Reading most days and there is little correlation between the spin speed and the weather. It is usually locked stationary whenever there is moderate wind, yet it often spins around furiously on dead flat calm inversion days. I really can't figure out what the point of it is.

airbus330
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Re: Moving to all Electric

#387353

Postby airbus330 » February 17th, 2021, 7:55 am

Mike4 wrote:
airbus330 wrote:Lets face it, all those windmills we have are producing lots of green leccy.


But ARE they?

I drive past the monster fkcer by J11 on the M4 at Reading most days and there is little correlation between the spin speed and the weather. It is usually locked stationary whenever there is moderate wind, yet it often spins around furiously on dead flat calm inversion days. I really can't figure out what the point of it is.

I know the one you mean and I've also noted it not rotating as much as I'd expect. Without knowing the specifics of that particular machine, but it is quite an old installation and technological progress has been steep. An urbanised location in the SE is not a particularly auspicious place for it to be. The machines have a limited wind speed range for a variety of reasons, so not unusual to not see them turning in high winds. There's some quite good videos on YT of out of control windmills! There are shedloads near me in S.Wales and the majority are working every day. TBH until recently I was very skeptical about alternative energy and thought nuclear was the way to go, but I can see that I was wrong now. My PV is 11 years old now, paid for itself in 9 years, 15 years of tax free returns left. Happy days.

JamesMuenchen
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Re: Moving to all Electric

#387362

Postby JamesMuenchen » February 17th, 2021, 8:44 am

Mike4 wrote:
dspp wrote:You presume wrong.

The solar panels are indeed token, but are actually there to allow the builder to skimp on insulation but still score enough points to meet the building regs. Given the opportunity you can rely on British builders to Jerry-build the cheapest possible crap every time.

- dspp


Or more accurately, you can rely on British builders to build to match consumer demand here. UK buyers care about the number of bedrooms and not a lot else as long as its cheap.

Offer a really well-built two bed house and a jerry-built three bed next to each other and the average British consumer will buy the three bed every time. In Germany it is reputedly different, Germans are particularly fussy about build quality and will seriously consider the well built two bed.

This isn't really true, in my experience (currently looking to buy/build a family house in Germany).

Germans are a nation of apartment dwellers and what matters most is the m2 - they can tell you down to the cm how much space their apartment has. This carries over into houses as well. We recently viewed a house that was over 300m2 (huge, you'd normally expect 7 - 10 rooms) and it was only 4 rooms. A lot of the space was in the garage, cellar, loft and garden terrace.

For quality and design, anything before the mid-90s will be absolutely schreck and look like it's from the 50's.

The current energy standards aren't really set by the regulations but de facto by the KFW, a state bank. KFW-55 is the most common one, it means built to use 55% of the energy of a "standard house". The KFW will give you a cheap mortgage up to €120k at 0.75 %, and rebate up to €48k of that for a KFW-55 renovation. Or a €30k rebate for a new-build KFW-40+.

The loan and rebate applies per apartment, so granny-flats are becoming very common.

Without this sponsorship, the actual savings you make by going to KFW-55 is marginal and KFW-40 or 40+ costs more to obtain than it saves the owner. It's all about the national targets really.

Generating your own energy is also complicated. You still have to pay tax and VAT on it and so it doesn't really pay off unless you declare it as a business and get a rebate on the installation. Is it the same in the UK?

Also we have district heating here and it works very well. I'm not sure why it wouldn't work in the UK.

Great discussion by the way, I found it very interesting and informative.

scrumpyjack
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Re: Moving to all Electric

#387371

Postby scrumpyjack » February 17th, 2021, 9:17 am

airbus330 wrote: TBH until recently I was very skeptical about alternative energy and thought nuclear was the way to go, but I can see that I was wrong now. My PV is 11 years old now, paid for itself in 9 years, 15 years of tax free returns left. Happy days.


I put mine in in Nov 2011 and it paid for itself in about 6 years, but it has been paid for by levies on other consumers and it really was a crazy scheme.
It meant we bought Chinese solar panels at a high price, enabling China to build up a huge PV manufacturing industry at our expense. Meanwhile we had lots of installers build up their businesses only to collapse when subsidies were reduced. It would have been better to have delayed setting up the subsidy scheme for 7 years or so and then it would have cost us half as much to buy the panels and we could have done it in a much bigger way.

Crazy economics!

ps on the housing issue it should be mandatory for agents house blurbs to quote the square feet of the property!

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Re: Moving to all Electric

#387378

Postby dspp » February 17th, 2021, 9:39 am

airbus330 wrote:
Mike4 wrote:
airbus330 wrote:Lets face it, all those windmills we have are producing lots of green leccy.


But ARE they?

I drive past the monster fkcer by J11 on the M4 at Reading most days and there is little correlation between the spin speed and the weather. It is usually locked stationary whenever there is moderate wind, yet it often spins around furiously on dead flat calm inversion days. I really can't figure out what the point of it is.

I know the one you mean and I've also noted it not rotating as much as I'd expect. Without knowing the specifics of that particular machine, but it is quite an old installation and technological progress has been steep. An urbanised location in the SE is not a particularly auspicious place for it to be. The machines have a limited wind speed range for a variety of reasons, so not unusual to not see them turning in high winds. There's some quite good videos on YT of out of control windmills! There are shedloads near me in S.Wales and the majority are working every day. TBH until recently I was very skeptical about alternative energy and thought nuclear was the way to go, but I can see that I was wrong now. My PV is 11 years old now, paid for itself in 9 years, 15 years of tax free returns left. Happy days.


That particular wind turbine (which is an Enercon by the way) was not erected in order to provide cost-effective generation. It was erected partly as an architectural statement and primarily for marketing purposes. The clue is in the name, Green Park, which was a large development. I used to live fairly nearby it, and at the time was heavily involved in designing & manufacturing & installing wind turbines. Our analysis of windspeeds in that area of the UK were that they were unsuitable for wind turbines at the time. The right thing to install in that area is and was solar PV.

regards, dspp

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Re: Moving to all Electric

#387383

Postby swill453 » February 17th, 2021, 9:47 am

scrumpyjack wrote:ps on the housing issue it should be mandatory for agents house blurbs to quote the square feet of the property!

It is in Scotland. Well the square metres anyway!

It's part of the mandatory Energy Performance Certificate.

Scott.

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Re: Moving to all Electric

#387394

Postby airbus330 » February 17th, 2021, 10:08 am

dspp wrote:
airbus330 wrote:
Mike4 wrote:

That particular wind turbine (which is an Enercon by the way) was not erected in order to provide cost-effective generation. It was erected partly as an architectural statement and primarily for marketing purposes. The clue is in the name, Green Park, which was a large development. I used to live fairly nearby it, and at the time was heavily involved in designing & manufacturing & installing wind turbines. Our analysis of windspeeds in that area of the UK were that they were unsuitable for wind turbines at the time. The right thing to install in that area is and was solar PV.

regards, dspp

Thanks for that info. So, a marketing gimmick. I suspect the grandiose plans for Swansea barrage/island would turn out the same way. And in the meantime the untold reality is this: (and I am not certain of the pedigree of this photo) wind turbine blades are not recyclable!
Image

dspp
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Re: Moving to all Electric

#387395

Postby dspp » February 17th, 2021, 10:13 am

JamesMuenchen wrote:
Mike4 wrote:
dspp wrote:You presume wrong.

The solar panels are indeed token, but are actually there to allow the builder to skimp on insulation but still score enough points to meet the building regs. Given the opportunity you can rely on British builders to Jerry-build the cheapest possible crap every time.

- dspp


Or more accurately, you can rely on British builders to build to match consumer demand here. UK buyers care about the number of bedrooms and not a lot else as long as its cheap.

Offer a really well-built two bed house and a jerry-built three bed next to each other and the average British consumer will buy the three bed every time. In Germany it is reputedly different, Germans are particularly fussy about build quality and will seriously consider the well built two bed.

This isn't really true, in my experience (currently looking to buy/build a family house in Germany).

Germans are a nation of apartment dwellers and what matters most is the m2 - they can tell you down to the cm how much space their apartment has. This carries over into houses as well. We recently viewed a house that was over 300m2 (huge, you'd normally expect 7 - 10 rooms) and it was only 4 rooms. A lot of the space was in the garage, cellar, loft and garden terrace.

For quality and design, anything before the mid-90s will be absolutely schreck and look like it's from the 50's.

The current energy standards aren't really set by the regulations but de facto by the KFW, a state bank. KFW-55 is the most common one, it means built to use 55% of the energy of a "standard house". The KFW will give you a cheap mortgage up to €120k at 0.75 %, and rebate up to €48k of that for a KFW-55 renovation. Or a €30k rebate for a new-build KFW-40+.

The loan and rebate applies per apartment, so granny-flats are becoming very common.

Without this sponsorship, the actual savings you make by going to KFW-55 is marginal and KFW-40 or 40+ costs more to obtain than it saves the owner. It's all about the national targets really.

Generating your own energy is also complicated. You still have to pay tax and VAT on it and so it doesn't really pay off unless you declare it as a business and get a rebate on the installation. Is it the same in the UK?

Also we have district heating here and it works very well. I'm not sure why it wouldn't work in the UK.

Great discussion by the way, I found it very interesting and informative.


The passivhaus level corresponds to about KFW-40 if one wears rose-tinted specs, or more likely KFW-30 or lower. Here are a couple of UK briefing papers from about 2011/2012 on potential lessons to be learned from the German experiences in considering adoption in the UK. Again, with rose tinted specs one could suggest that the UK's BREAM level 6 / CfSH level 6 approximately attains passivhaus, but again I think that is being somewhat optimistic and that one needs to go further to really reach passivhaus.

Here are the briefing papers,
https://www.zerocarbonhub.org/sites/def ... F47%29.pdf (NHBC)
https://sticerd.lse.ac.uk/dps/case/cp/kfwfullreport.pdf (LSE)

Some comments from me:
- Firstly those two papers (most especially the shorter NHBC one) have a distinctly UK-developer spin about them, the LSE one less so. I recollect seeing rather firmer ones being written with more of a pro-passivhaus slant than these, but I can't find them on the web in a hurry.
- Secondly, imho, to really get the full economic benefits of passivhaus in newbuild you have to delete the conventional heating system in its entirety which is in essence what PhaseThree has done in building his/her passivhaus which only has a "a 3kW ..(Immersion) heater connected to the underfloor heating pipes. This is run with E7 electricity so is only on for 7 hours per day. In these dark cold days of January I am using around 12kWh per day for heating (around £1 per day). The house is always warm and at the temperature we like with no draughts, cold spots or other nasties. I have wired the house for electric radiators as top-up, this is unused. The total cost of the heating system was no more than £500.".
- Thirdly if you compare those papers from 2012 with what has actually happened in the UK market you will observe that the developers/lobbyists/politicians nobbled the intended efficiency improvements. These had already been nobbled and hobbled on multiple occasions over previous decades by the same trio. The result is that with every passing decade the UK has continued to build more sub-standard housing stock which is an entirely avoidable tragedy.
- Fourthly the Grenfell fire has set the UK back further decades. I personally think that more people will lose more years of their lives as a consequence of the post-Grenfell reduction in UK housing insulation than lost their lives in the fire itself. Furthermore the root cause of the fire (desperately poor technical skills, standards, inspection, specification, understanding vs primacy of commercial factors) permeates the whole of UK society and is so evident in almost all UK housing stock.

Anyway, in the next week or so there will be another room insulated, this time at my GF's. Uprating loft insulation from 100mm to 200mm (amd maybe then 300mm), and fitting 60mm insulation (plus 12.5mm PB) internally, against solid external wall in a grade II listed house, with concommitant electrics and radiator re-site, whilst retaining/reinstating period detailing and doing a full redecoration of that room. It can be done, bit by bit, and it is generally worth doing provided one keeps a sense of proportion. If I were doing a newbuild I would probably personally insist on passivhaus.

regards, dspp

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Re: Moving to all Electric

#387398

Postby dspp » February 17th, 2021, 10:19 am

airbus330 wrote:
dspp wrote:
airbus330 wrote:

Thanks for that info. So, a marketing gimmick. I suspect the grandiose plans for Swansea barrage/island would turn out the same way. And in the meantime the untold reality is this: (and I am not certain of the pedigree of this photo) wind turbine blades are not recyclable!


That particular Green Park one is indeed a marketing gimmick. All of us in the industry were appalled at the tragedy because we could see that it would bring the industry into unjustified disrepute. Blame the commercial developers, as so often in the UK.

Turning to that photo of yours. Firstly if you don't know the provenance then why post it. Secondly wind turbine blades are recyclable, just like any primarily GRP structure - the best pathway at the moment is to use them to co-fire cement plants where the glass ends up as reinforcement in concrete (3mm chopped strand glass is often added into concrete for strength). There are other recycling pathways, and looking at that picture I have a suspicion that the blades are part of an engineered civil structure but that is just a guess from some of the detailing.

regards, dspp


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