nomadpete

Hello everybody. All the best for the festive season!

Jet skis are a law unto themselves. All other small motor craft are required to carry 'an alternate means of propolsion'. (Paddles)

It is illegal here to do anything electrical, except replace a light bulb or a smoke alarm battery. No replacing 3 pin plugs. No making an extension leads. No replacing a switch. No replacing a power outlet. No touchy the wires! Etc, etc.

The Australian Electrical Office is pretty tough. They can impose fines up to $20,000 for electrical work done by a non qualified person (business fines are very severe). In theory, any time any work is done, the electrician must supply a certificate of compliance describing the work done. In my recent experience, they didn't. But the other thing is if there is a fire you might find your insurance is on shakey ground.

Mostly along winded whinge being used to promote a dashcam. He has a point about driver education and preventative policing. One thing that surprised me - the annual road death tolls for India & China are 250,000.

Yes. All mains wiring must be terminated by a licenced electrical contractor.

With all due respect, I point out (for readers) the fact that an engineer is not permitted to do domestic electrical work - unless they happen to also be a currently licenced electrical contractor. I'm not arguing the merit of the items involved. Just the legal responsibilities involved. Was mentioned by you as being expensive but they are comprehensive and simple for a consumer to safely utilise. I agree, as you are aware ( but didn'tmention), there are more cost effective solutions (such as mine). I have 30 years experience in the power industry. I am not a licenced electrical contractor although I am capable - as you might be - to do the work at least as well as a contractor, but I choose to do it the legal way. Liability is a bitch.

When properly set up, the changeover switch isolates the street side wiring and only activates the normal internal house power. The pic is what we have at the Fire Station. Obviously it must be installed by a registered electrical contractor.

In your case, you should be able to run your 15A extension lead from your EV to the meter box. Much easier than running extension leads into the house and to each appliance you want to use.

KG, a possible affordable solution for you:- Get a sparky in to separate 'essential' power points & lighting circuits. Get him to set those up with a Emergency Manual switch - to a 15A power input (caravan plug). This will allow me to leave my genset near the meter box, and when the power goes down I switch over, start the genny, and the lights, fridge, TV all work. (Within the 15A maximum) The A/C and oven will not. I can give you an idea of cost after mine is finished. The sparky is busy over xmas.

At the rate that our governments are dithering, you are probably right.

Try it! It'll stop you rolling out of bed.

The public are already voting with their own wallets, just look at the PV panel sales. When batteries reach a critical pricepoint, the public will be buying them in big numbers. Combined with suitable EV interface, a modest house battery will put an end to reliance on grid power.

I try to do that AFTER I get up.

This map shows the average hours of sunshine per month. It shouldnt be too hard to figure out the average backup power required for 'days the sun don't shine'. http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/maps/averages/sunshine-hours/ Of course the average doesn't account for the exceptional seasons, but a contingency allowance would cover that. BTW, pumped hydro can come online very quickly - less than 1/2 a second. But we need to start building a bunch of them.

I'd rather go by BOM records http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/maps/averages/solar-exposure/

But Spacey, even if you do eat and shit.... You still die!

Therein lies proof that the most important organ in a body is.... Not the brain.... not the heart.... It's the asshole!

You were talking about house fires Spacey. So that was the context of my answer. I have seen I beams bend like wet spaghetti in a domestic fire but have not seen steel or cement actually combust.

Good point. However, when you look up in a dark sky at an object, unless you already know how big it is and there is a known object beside it you have no terms of reference to gauge height, size or speed. So I disregard the claims of 'size of an SUV' etc. And radar often fails to pick up things at lower altitudes - FlightRadar 24 often shows gaps in flight paths around my place, due to terrain obstructions. It soinds like these alleged sightings are too brief for proper verification. Mass hysteria in a paranoid country?

There are pictues of these things displaying nav lights. How often do meteors, comets, alien spacefraft or chinese spy balloons have red/green nav lights?

Since breathing rate is a pretty random subject...... This peer reviewed research explains the effects on blood pressure and resting heart rate. It shows that the simple practice can do good things. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0002914917306185 There are other papers that attest to reduced stress and improved sleep. When I remember to spend 5 min practicing it before sleep, I find it helpful.

All true. My sleeping breathing rate is around 12 ish. However, a period of deliberately practiced slow, deep breathing has been shown to benefit - it lowers stress and improves sleep quality.

Yes, trained firies have a fair idea what to do once they assess the incident. Honestly, we have a far bigger problem assessing chimney fires, which often render the house ununhabitable even when we get there so quickly that all you saw was a whisp of smoke. BTW, we haven't yet had to deal with any kind of lithium battery fire. But no doubt they will happen. Everything except bricks, concrete and steel might catch fire one day.

Lots of things can do that. I have attended two rooftop fires where solar panels were involved. One was caused by a faulty isolator switch - which has been recalled but the owner didn't bother to get it replaced. The other was caused by rodents eating through insulation where the cable entered the roof. Could have happened even if they didn't have solar. Neither houses were noticably damaged and nobody was harmed. I suspect the hazard of solar panels is rather minor.