kgwilson

Clinton & Obama have weighed in on this describing it as "a moment that will shape history" urging Trump to "reconsider his approach saying “Over the course of a lifetime, we face only a few moments where the decisions we make and the actions we take will shape our history for years to come. This is one of them. If we give our freedoms away after 250 years, we might never get them back.” Prominent republicans & some of the original MAGA influencers, the most prominent Being Joe Rogan, have also been critical of Trump, Noem & ICE. Some commentators are likening ICE to the Gestapo in WW2. This has caused Trump to refuse to defend the ICE agent when asked & now say that the administration is "reviewing everything" about the incident. There will be no apology, ICE will get away with a review & a few sackings & the murderers will get off lightly. Trump will blame those he sacks as always though.

Kristy Noem has jumped in to blame the victims in both ICE murders with no evidence and in fact with photographic, video and personal reports from witnesses to the contrary completely ignored. Hopefully this will be a wake up call for Trump & his appointed sycophants that continually lying will eventually catch up on them

This is old news. It was reported over a year ago though it is still relevant. ICE agents appear to be recruited on the basis of Trump loyalty, Nazi philosophy, 100% MAGA deviancy, and thuggery. They are 21st century brown shirts & most won't show their face. If anything is a catalyst for a civil war this mob are at the top of the list.

Most new EVs from China are produced using numerous robots. The Xpeng factory in Guangzhou has 700 robots and produces a car every 76 seconds. They have now introduced humanoid robots to carry out tasks normally done by people like fitting wiring harnesses and fiddly detailed work. The robot is called IRON & they have developed a chip called Turing (after Alan Turing of Enigma code breaking fame) capable of handling 30 billion parameters. The dark (no lighting required) 100% robot car factory is touted to become a reality by 2030 just 4 years from now. Even Tesla say that the model 3 bodies are now 95% robot produced.

The main problem with recycling EV batteries in Australia is that there have not been enough of them to warrant the creation of a recycling plant. This will of course change as more EVs are added to the Australian vehicle fleet. The early recycling plants in the US (there are a number of good You tube videos) have proven that almost all of the critical minerals are recyclable. We just do not have the volume at this stage & that is all lithium based batteries able to be recycled. At this stage old EV batteries are still quite valuable for use as home or commercial energy storage but there are few available & mostly they are from early BMW or Nissan Leaf EVs as well as those recovered from crashed EVs. I imagine the federal and state governments battery subsidies will have the effect of reducing the value of these as well. Once an EV battery gets to about 70% of its original storage capacity, it still has many years of home storage left even though no longer useful in the EV. Add to that the fact that EV batteries are lasting considerably longer than original predictions. I have done just over 35,000km in my 2023 MG4 & battery health is still showing 100% The good thing about all of this is that batteries have a circular life with 96% of materials being recovered during recycling. Compare that to fossil fuels which are used once & then they are gone.

Mine doesn't. There is no filler cap at all.

I recently installed a new system as when we bought the property it had 8 x 175 watt panels approx 20 years old & the best out put I was getting in the middle of the day in Spring was about 950 watts. Each new panel is rated at 440 watts but are bi-facial so also generate from reflected light from the roof below. I have 20 panels arranged in 7 East facing, 6 North facing & 7 West facing on my Garage & Shed roofs at approximately 15 degrees of tilt. Total theoretical maximum generation 8.8 kW. Also installed is a 10kWh hybrid inverter and an 18.64 kWh battery. Installation was on 24 November 2025. Results to date are astounding. Heat hasn't made much difference as far as I can tell. We have had numerous days in the mid 30s & a few high 30s. The maximum generation has been 10 kW from a theoretical 8.8kW. Documentation states Up to 15% more from the reflected light to the under side of the panel so that is almost what has been achieved. There is considerable skepticism as to bi-facial effectiveness but my system proves it works as specified. Not only that, I haven't used any grid power at all & have had air conditioning on most of the time with everything in the house electric (except the gas BBQ & solar hot water). I have also charged my EV & 80 volt zero turn mower from the system. The total cost was $11,600.00 & I reckon 4-5 years payback. Anyone with a reasonable rooftop solar system should take advantage of the battery subsidies on offer. Our battery has never depleted below 60% overnight so a large battery (more than 15 kWh) is likely to be overkill for most people. The Federal subsidy scheme has been so successful that the $3.2 billion, expected to last till 2030 is half gone already & the scheme is being modified as installers were encouraging huge batteries (up to 50kWh) not up to 15kW that they were expecting. This was due to the subsidy being based on $ per kWh & a big battery could be installed for way less per kWh than a small one. All I am paying now is the daily supply charge. Some retailers are now charging over $2.00 a day for this. If all goes well over the next year I may pull the plug on the grid entirely.

In the beginning Man created God and in his own image created he, him. The rest is embellishment and stories with added prophets to reinforce the dictum, then the multitude of religions grew and were/are enforced by coercive control built in to each from the youngest possible age.

I wouldn't be a politician for the 4 or 5 hundred grand a year they get. Their lives are not their own and they have little time for their families. Taking the family to a sports event when you are the sports minister is OK with me as she has long periods of time away from them. The trip to the UN was an absolute must as Australia is the first in the world to impose a social media ban for under 16s & she championed it and needed to get this across to other nations who are trying to do the same. To me it promotes Australia as being at the forefront of a caring society not at the bottom of the pit like the US where the only thing that matters is the billionaires getting even richer. At their level of importance and the personal sacrifices they have to make plus having to be places at short notice means flying first class is totally justified and what I expect. Like everyone she made the choice to get in to politics but it is unforgiving and brutal. Put any of the armchair warriors who whinge about everything in their position and the tune will change pretty rapidly

The asbestos rumour is indeed a furphy. Turbine blades are made from fibreglass &/or carbon fibre composites like a lot of other modern and highly technical products including many aircraft. Recycling this is quite difficult but they can be ground in to filler for roads and cement products or repurposed for infrastructure as in bridges etc.. The rest of the turbine is fully recyclable containing mostly metals (steel, aluminium, copper) and concrete which can be crushed into aggregate.

There are plenty of solar farms that co-exist with cropping or grazing. Modern panels are translucent to a degree so some light gets through to the ground. Sheep are ideal for use in what is known as Agrivoltaics as they graze under standard height panels, remove the need for mechanical or chemical vegetation control, provide shelter for sheep, reduce the fire risk and actually improve the pasture as well as providing an additional source of income.

I think what we need in a balance mix of large scale renewables (solar/Wind/pumped hydro) large scale battery storage which includes pumped water, rooftop solar and home batteries, Industry solar & batteries, and neighbourhood batteries for local communities with rooftop solar with no battery. All these are happening to a degree but not fast enough. Government incentives for home batteries is getting a massive response from home owners with rooftop solar & this will inevitably reduce stress on the grid as will neighbourhood batteries & Industry batteries. That is not to say the existing grid is satisfactory, it is not, and growing demand means upgrades and maintenance is even more important. Now there are AI data centres planned that have a huge appetite for energy. There has to be some sort of limitation put on some new large energy consumers or we won't have the capacity in the timeframe it takes for the consumers to come on line. New Coal is simply too expensive and too polluting to even consider, though some idiot politicians think it is still OK. Nuclear is way to expensive to build and takes far too long to be a viable option in the medium 10 to 15 year timeframe, plus we have no experience or expertise. So far at just under 2 weeks since my new solar and battery was installed I have only exported power & used zero grid power even while charging my EV, running A/C & normal household stuff. I also have a fault in one string of panels so they are not producing power at all yet. Total on line is 5.7 kW max of solar.

I had a heat pump in my last house and it was tied in to the solar system so I never paid anything for hot water. My current property has solar hot water with a manual electric switch for the internal resistive element. Since the 4th of august i have switched it on once for about 3 hours when we had a week of cloudy and rainy weather. In Victoria I imagine the elctrice system would need to be on more often.

It is not surprising that the right wing of politics are heading down hill. They keep rabbiting on about how they will make electricity cheaper but have no plans on how this will happen. They keep harping on about "base load" power a term from last century when everything was coal. It is "peak demand" that is the issue now and during heat waves with the huge demand for air conditioning etc brown outs are a reality. These have happened even before there was much renewable energy around. We are awash with energy in the middle of the day now with so much commercial solar and wind and the huge amount of rooftop solar on homes and businesses so storing that energy is just common sense. Many early solar farms are switching off during peak production when the spot price goes negative as they never envisaged they would need to store energy. In NSW home owners are limited to exporting a maximum of 5 kW to help prevent grid overload. So if you are producing more and have no storage the excess is dissipated as heat. Storage is what we need. Batteries are expensive though but fast to deploy. Pumped hydro is a great way to do this as well but costly & time consuming to set up. One part of the puzzle is State & Federal subsidised batteries for home owners. My installer said to me that up until June it was all new rooftop solar. From July on it has been all new batteries, most on properties that already have large solar systems & some like me installing both. These do not need any new infrastructure at all and reduce the load on existing poles & wires so the subsidies are paying for them selves.

I have had my new solar system & battery now for 1 week. So far I have not imported any energy & have exported about 75kWh. I have charged my EV twice, charged my ride on mower twice, run the air conditioning for several hours on 5 out of 7 days, run a freezer & large fridge/freezer & used electricity on other household things as normal like cooking, washing, dishwasher, TV, lights, computers etc. The battery has never got down to below 40% before it starts recharging in the morning. I have 5.8 kW of solar panels with 3.0 kW yet to come on line. The battery is 18.64 kWh & is expandable up to 41.76 kWh. We have had mostly sunny or partly cloudy days with one mostly overcast. Cost $11,650.00 which will take about 6 years to pay back. The feed in tariff is poor at 2.8c/kWh so my only cost will be the exorbitant supply charge of nearly $2.00 a day offset a bit by the feed in tariff.. My long term goal is to go off grid but I will probably need to add a couple of extra 4.66 kWh modules to the battery. Time will tell. There are plenty of people like me doing the same especially those living on acreage or in country areas prone to power cuts and a lot more adding batteries but not intending to leave the grid. This just one part of our clean energy future.