The Bywong Soapbox

The Federal Trade Commission will try to regulate blogging for the first time, requiring writers on the Web to clearly disclose any freebies or payments they get from companies for reviewing their products.

Take 'this' FTC

“Hello There!”  Would you like to try ‘this’?

Wonderful!  Try it today!

Try it tomorrow!

It’s BAD for you, but try it anyway!

These Federal guys are beginning to sound like Australian politicos, always trying to squeeze a few more dollars from our pockets.  What will they try to ‘regulate’ next?

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.

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.