The Bywong Soapbox

How many of you  Bywong/Wamboin residents have come home after a hard days work to find your dog cowering under the veranda or hiding in it’s dog house? Shaking, afraid to come out?  Does this odd behaviour in your pet seem to occur about every three months?

You’ve probably been visited by Country Energy’s Meter Reader.

Oh, he’s a friendly old sort… Always smiling and happy to chew the fat on what’s happening in the neighbourhood.  But if your pet get too close to him, he’s quick to throw the boot or give your pet a good cuff to the ear.

Yes, this friendly old guy has a real mean streak towards over-exuberant pets.  I’ve watched him.  On each visit to my electric meter he has either cuffed or booted a small puppy, who’s only crime was the joy of having someone new to smell and lick.

Is it this mans place to discipline your pet? How would you feel if he were dispensing this sort of discipline to your child?

This isn’t the first time Country Energy Contractors have taken liberties with pets.

A favorite dog of mine, who has since gone to his great reward, was once disciplined by the Country Energy tree trimmers.  I came home to find the poor animal bleeding from the nose with a crushed eye socket. Evidently, he’d been ‘disciplined’ by the tree trimmers.

I rang the Country Energy people and explained my concerns.  Their answer wasn’t good enough, so I’ve indicated to them that any future visits by their contractors would require a phone call to arrange a time for me to be present while any subsequent work is carried out.

I have told these people, any Country Energy Contractor venturing onto my property, without my permission, will be treated as an intruder and dealt with as such.

Unfortunately, I’ve had to extend this to the Meter Reader as well.

Remember, Country Energy is not above the law, nor are they allowed dominion over your animals.

Well, I never thought I would be singing the praises of Actew Corporation,  but I must admit, they’ve finally done something exemplary for regional tourism.  I hope the rest of Australia reads this blog, as I should think Actew’s actions should be made a boilerplate for all further injections of corporate assistance.

Corporate Neighbours

Will Burra Creek look like this?

The Burra residents should be well pleased that thousands of tourists will be visiting their area in the very near future, to take advantage of a new and exciting tourist draw.  The additional tourism will mean huge increases in local services, restaurant, petrol stations, outdoor sporting goods and retail sales.  Burra could become a very large and wealthy village in the coming years.

Where 'White Water Rafting' begins

And how is this huge change going to occur?  Why,  Actew Corporation has graciously committed to providing the area with a new and exciting sport, “White Water Rafting”.  Yes friends and neighbours, Actew Corporation is going to release 100 Million litres of water per day into Burra Creek.  Not only will the sport be viable on the creek, the water, once the new gas-fired generator is built in Williamsdale, will be WARM! Yes folks, Actew will use up to 60 litres of water per second to cool the power station and dump up to 5 million litres of hot water into Burra Creek every day!

Personally, I can’t think of a finer corporate neighbour than Actew Corporation.  I just wish I were one of the shareholders who are going to reap some of the gazillions of dollars generated by this unselfish act of community service.

Country Energy, the third world supplier of electricity to Southeast Regional Australia, has once again dropped the ball for its customer base around 5:42AM this morning.  Here is a power company who charges a premium rate and additional excise to supply customers of a ‘rural’ and ‘rural residential’ nature.  Oh yes, Victoria, it costs so much more to supply the farm folk with electricity… 

Perhaps you’d think it a plausible excuse to gouge customers, but the least they could do is supply a quality product for the exorbitant fees they charge.  The power garnered from the Country Energy grid has probably the most spikes, noise, glitches, over/under voltage swings and momentary outages than any other power company in Australia.  For this third world type service, ‘rural’ and ‘rural residential’ customers are tithed severely, with some of the highest penalty rates around.

Now, you note I have bracketed the words ‘rural’ and ‘rural residential’. The areas which are abused by

Standing around waiting for a smoko

Country Energy and their less than adequate consumer supply,  are within 30kms of the National Capital City, Canberra.  That’s right, most of this service area is within sight of Telstra Tower, which looms above Canberra.

I know many people in this service area who attempt to run small businesses from their ‘rural’ properties..  Most say they need to run a UPS backup and power filtering system, just to keep their electronic equipment from dying from the almost indigestible electricity provided.

I myself, have been moving more and more of my household off the electricity grid. It makes sense to invest my cash in solar panels & batteries, than to pay Country Energy a premium rate for third world service.  The power I generate is clean, smooth and dependable.  Oddly enough, the Sun is very happy to keep my 1650Ah battery pack charged and the wind is kind enough to top it all off when the wind happens to  blow. The end result is that, to date, I’ve reduced my quarterly power bill by 50%.  Which is just as well, for Country Energy keeps edging the rates higher for lesser quality service.  Remember Victoria, it costs SO much more to supply the poor farm folk.

Basic Thermosyphon

As an aside: My experiments with hot water Solar powered Thermosyphon concepts have proven very efficient and a large scale collector and storage tank  are being constructed as a phase two project.  I am surprised as the quantity of hot water that can be produced by a small solar collector.  I might finally get that spa I’ve always wanted.  Without the pain of paying for the electricity to heat it.

Perhaps the Solar Panel outfitters should target this area a bit better.   Discounted installations of household solar systems, which dump their excess energy onto the grid (for which you get credited), would surely return profit in sheer volume of sales.  Just as an observer, I’d say people in the area are tired of living with third world energy supply and I’ll bet they would jump at the chance to give Country Energy the bird.

From the Chicago Tribune:

“Exelon Corp. will unveil on Wednesday plans to build a $60 million solar power plant on Chicago’s South Side, a small step to fighting climate change that leans heavily on government funding due to the high cost of turning sunlight into electricity

Proposed Excelon Solar Array

“It’s a way to start participating in renewable energy,” said Tom O’Neill, Exelon’s senior vice president of generation development. “Ultimately, we are putting 10 megawatts of electricity on the grid. It’s not much. But you’ve got to start somewhere.”

America gets about one-ten-thousandth of its electricity from the sun, according to the Energy Department. There’s room for growth. ”

Room for growth indeed, but why America when Australia is supposed to be the “Sun Burnt Country”?  I think the Australian Government has been sidetracked by the promise of great returns from the Wind Turbine industry.  They seem to want to ignore the premise that “When the wind don’t blow the power don’t flow.”

Having done the maths and my own physical tests on both wind & solar powered arrays, I’ve come to the conclusion that Australia should be leaning towards solar as the backbone of renewable enegy sources.  As an example to the premise stated above, my small solar array will deliver 20Amps to the battery bank on  typical sunny, Australian day. However, even on a cold, damp, overcast day, I’ll still get 5 to 8Amps into the batteries.  Keeping the premise that “When the wind don’t blow the power don’t flow” in mind, the weather statistics for this area show days and days of nil wind.

The megalithic Rural Industrial Complex they’re constructing on the Eastern ridges of Lake George is not only an eyesore, it’s not going to produce the expected amount of power all the investors seem to want. There will be a great “Weeping and Gnashing of teeth” when the dividends on these 60 plus towers, fail to appear.

But wait! There’s more!

What about this solar array in (of all places) Chicago?  What about a suitable site a

round these parts? What about that dry, disused plain we laughingly call Lake George?   Why isn’t someone filling the lake bed with elevated solar arrays?  Yes, you’d have to elevate the arrays on 3 meter stanchions in case the water decided to came back.  And how would you service such an array?  You’d use a Cherry Picker during the dry spells and purpose built barges for the time when the old lake actually has some water in it.

Completely doable and if the Chicagoans think they can get 10 MegaWatts from 39 acres, what do you suppose we could get from 6000 acres?

Rounded out? About 150 times the Chicago output.  So what would you do with between 750MegaWatts and 1.5 GigaWatts of  power, produced daily…. sun or cloud…. every day…. without fail…   Now, that assumes you fill the entire lake bed with Solar panels.

Now, the doomsayers will pipe up and say, “That’s all fine for the sunlight periods, but what about night? There won’t be any power at night!”   Typical shortsightedness.  What do you suppose the Snowy Mountain Scheme does with the power it makes at night?  Why, it uses it to pump the turbine water back up to the higher reservoirs. So the Snowy’s water generated power isn’t available at night either.

The issue here is not to replace the electrical power producing infrastructure we have now, but to augment it during peak load periods.  What an augmentation! 1.5 GigaWatts of electricity!  No noisy wind turbines. No ‘sliced & diced’ Wedge tailed Eagles. No sleepless nights from the sonic vibrations of 65 wind turbines mounted to the bedrock.  Just a large lakebed, filled with shimmering arrays of slient solar panels. Quietly producing 1.5 GigaWatts of power.

2MegaWatt array at Ft. Carson

Now THERE’S a tourist attraction…  We have the Big Banana, The Big Merino, The Big Pineapple, The Big Trout and we could show off The Big Solar Array to all and sundry.

A news short this morning indicated that the ACCC (Australia’s toothless Consumer Watchdog), was weeping and gnashing it’s teeth about the apparent ripoff of the Australian people by the major oil companies, this holiday weekend. Seems the oil giant raised the pump price by 5 cents for no reason other than it was a good weekend to gouge the public.

You don’t need the ACCC to tell Australia that it’s being ripped off by the oil companies. We’re supposed to be a bright lot down here, but we seem all to ready to accept what’s put in front of us. Some Oil company exec want’s to buy his wife a new Mercedes? No problem, just raise the pump prices a bit.

There seems to be movement across the big water, to incorporate hydrogen gas usage into automobiles. There’s even an outfit who’s found a safe way to store it in automotive sized tanks using metal hydrides as a sponge. Let’s not mention green things, like using hydrogen to fire the big power stations such as Loy Yang.

Australia, the sunburnt country… and as the tune goes… “Girt by sea”. So when’s some bright spark going to find a way to turn sea water into hydrogen gas by using solar power? Perhaps a Government owned entity that keeps the big oil companies out of the picture? Transparent and accountable to the Australian people? (sorry.. just a moment of delusion there).

Do that, and the Oil Barons can use their crude to pour on their Wheat Bix in the morning.