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QUEENSLAND'S pumped storage was commissioned circa 1980 and is still running and unlikely to shut down any time soon. There is no hazardous products nor expensive maintenance coming from a couple of big flywheels spinning on greased bushes. Peak output 600Mw with cut in time measured in milliseconds. Like a big battery without all the chemicals. The entire construction is achieved with simple well proven local engineering. I am dumbfounded by the absence of such a simple, relatively quick solution to storage has not been built. Other than the Qld one.

sorry I'm late on this. Regarding the report the coalition have on NP. It can't be worse than the gen cost report. It sounds like the new one still give NP a 30 year life which is not right. Some plants have been given 20 year extensions on their 40 year lives which will bring them out to 60 years. There is no reason not to expect the new reactors to be capable of 80 years. They also gave wind a 40-50% capacity factor. The farm I worked was in the low 30's and one year I know was under 30%. There hasn't been much private interest in NP in Australia because the easiest way for companies to make money is the status quo. Do we really want private companies running our power. It hasn't really been to successful in the last 30 years. NP can load follow, it just never has had to and hasn't been a top priority. The other thing with private retailers is that the general public should not have to be corparate lawers or economists to get the best deal on electricity. This harms less educated (I'm a fitter and work with my hands. If I start reading documents my mind goes blank after a few minutes unless they are technical) people more. Electricity is not just a nice to have but is a necessity. Nuclear spent fuel problem has been solved with recycling, 300year storage for fission products (approx 10 half lives and then very little radiation left) and burial for the long lived waste. (long lived because it is not very radioactive) The biggest issue with it is the new fuel is so damn cheap it may not be economic. Same story with wind turbine blades. Denmark has been going down the renewable path a long time but they still have a coal fired plant. (see www.electrictymaps.com) Germany's opposition are talking about restarting some nuclear plants that are still in one piece. There is a plan for large virtual battery's using everybody's home battery. Do we want our grid to reply on the home owner. I know people that are getting so little return on the excess they are putting into the grid while the retailer gets a lot more saying the will turn them off. Energy Australia was looking at doing pumped storage in SA near port Augusta using sea water but there was not enough profit in it. They will probably hang off until the government (taxpayers)give more money to make it more profitable. I am not anti renewables (worked on a wind farm for over 10 years) but they are far from the answer by themselves. Finished now.

Thanks for a thorough explanation. it's much as I expected. Nev

Technically, yes. Someone who holds the Office of Constable is an independent entity, answerable only to the Monarch. However, to enable efficient and effective law enforcement, those independent entities are bound together in an organisation. By being bound together in an organisation, there can be standardisation in the many areas such as operational procedures and administration. I am using the term "constable" to include persons holding NCO and Commissioned ranks within the organisation as their powers of arrest are the same as the newly attested constable. When it comes to law enforcement, it is the individual constable who brings an allegation before a Court. In other words, if a constable brings a person before a court using poor supporting evidence and the allegation is dismissed because of a want of good evidence (not on some technicality) then the constable could be made to pay the legal costs of the person accused. Normally if an Order for Costs is granted, the police organisation pays on behalf of the constable. So. The individual constable has the ability to use discretion to deal with a breach of the law as circumstances dictate. That can range from simply a direction to move on, with no further action if the direction is obeyed, to apprehension and initiation of proceedings. However, this ability to apply discretion has been eroded due to the very many independent overseers of police activity, whose raison d'etre seems to be to vilify everything constables do. This has resulted in the development of a culture of "covering your arse", which leads to the abandonment of discretion and automotin-like action. It was the opinion of working police that they did. When I joined the NSW Police, I was trained at the Redfern Police Academy. The curriculum dealing with Law and Police Procedures could be equated to an apprenticeship in which experienced police taught recruits what they needed to know to operate as General Duties police. There was no mention of policing theory. As for ethics, the teaching was simple: "There are three things that will get you into trouble - gash, bash and cash. Avoid them". When the Police Academy moved to Goulburn, training became more academic. Great emphasis was placed on integrity. These recruits were indoctrinated to believe that everyone who had gone through Redfern was corrupt and that it was the duty of Goulburn graduates to record and report any type of action that wasn't on the straight and narrow, no matter how little the deviation. As a result, the use of discretion was looked upon as deviating from the One True Path, so its application withered away, resulting in the black and white law enforcement we see today.

Your rooftop could probably produce 10x that amount.. It doesn't really matter a lot whether the storage is funded by private enterprise Or a Co- op. Ideally you're in a market and competition would exist. With Dutton there won't be any. Take it or leave it everyone. THEN you WILL have something to whinge about. You'll also be stuck with a grid to supply from very few sources .Nev

The Police Integrity Unit indulge in entrapment do they? Do you as the apprehending person have NO discretion. If he slipped you a fiver, they might have a point. Nev

My reason for pointing out to a driver that they had offended, but giving them absolution (Catholic reference there) was that they would have a great story to tell their mates around a bar-b-que, and that the interaction between themself and the Police and also the reason for the interaction, would be remembered, with the hope that a recurrence would occur. But then, I worked a stretch of the Hume Highway where I could "fill a book" in a shift, so, like a recreational fisherman, I could throw the occasional one back. However, one had to be careful that the speeding motorist wasn't a undercover member of the Professional Integrity Unit, aiming to lay some allegation of corruption on you.

What matters is the longer term balance between generation and consumption. Well it matters, as long as there is a storage media to smooth out supply & demand. My humble 3Kw PV produces approximately the same energy annually as our house consumes annually. I just can't afford a flywheel big enough to tide me over the dark times.

I totally agree with changing the policing from fund raising, to cautions and friendly educating. A long time ago I was so gratefilto a copper who stopped me, then said something like 'We both know that was a silly thing to do. I'm letting you off... this time" I remember the lesson but I hardly recall anything that later coppers said when they booked me for similar stuff. I rarely get an infringement these days - but haven't had a caution since 1970.

Neither the car nor the road caused the car to travel at an unacceptable speed. It was the driver. Punishment does have an effect on reasonable people, but there will always be a few unreasonable ones amongst us. I suggest that the punishment must include re-education, or in fact, education as well as penalties. I also feel strongly that there should be a greater effort made to change the "book him, Danno" approach to law enforcement which is the culture of traffic law enforcement. Perhaps if Australian police adopted the British approach and only prosecuted the outrageous, but were prepared to do more waving of the angry finger at minor infractions, then perhaps overall compliance might be improved. I have to agree with Spacey in that governments rely very heavily on income from traffic fines to meet other Budget requirements. Declining to issue On-the-Spot infringement notices is one of the best tactics police can use as a bargaining chip when trying to negotiate employment awards. A week's worth of income from fines would often meet the extra expenditure of pay rises.

Thanks. That is sufficient answer to my question. I do realise that the number of photons striking the generating surface is dependent on the angle between the Sun and the surface. If I remember my traffic radar training correctly, this difference is due to cosine error, which introduces a numerical factor resulting in a lower actual value than the theoretical value. I would have thought that heat would have a positive effect on solar electricity generation, since heat increases the energy of a substance, making it more likely to shed electrons. Perhaps the opposite is correct and heat lets the substance hold on to its electrons more strongly.

our highway speed laws are only .IMHO. revenue raising Just look at the $millions , both State and Federal are racking in ! . spacesailor

Rather than "could", I would say "should" or more strongly, "must'. Establishing community batteries and maintaining a distribution network would cost money, no matter whose money it was. Who owns the distribution network at the moment? Is it government or private? Would it be acceptable for private companies to install community batteries and maintain them by charging a rent to "store" electricity for those charging the batteries with excess domestic solar generated electricity? The rent could be calculated on the amount delivered to the battery and the amount a household used when a premises' system was not generating. That withdrawal charge could also be applied to non-contributors in the same way that we pay for electricity at the moment.

Is the value of a couple of cars greater than the value of lives lost to careless drivers? Further, most owners of rare & collectabe cars don't lend them to careles hoons.

Not about Mr Dutton's plans, but relevant to the looming energy crisis.... There is a lot of marginal farmland out past Roma in Qld. The area also has great annual sun radiation. Sounds like a suitable location for a big PV farm. A couple of years ago, the grid owners invested around $500 million in extending the coastal grid out to Roma - to supply power the power hungry gas industry. Note this might be redundant after the gas seams have been emptied. But the HV grid can work in either direction. So, there is now a grid connection between a perfect solar farm location and the populous east coast grid. All we need is the government to get off its ass and build some coastal pumped storage.

Newer versions have better results with diffuse light. Panels have dropped to only about 20% of their former price. This is by far the cheapest energy for the average person. Battery back up could be a community or local area project, completely INDEPENDANT of the system. ALL getting cheaper when everything else will get more expensive.. We are NOT a Nuclear Nation and it's not a simple or Popular move to become one. Nuclear has to be Cooled and that ADDS heat. Disposal and cleaning up the sites after decommissioning is NOT (conveniently?) mentioned in Dutton's Costs. The whole thing is sneaky and Deceptive and lacking in detail. IF the Market won't fund it there's SOMETHING SERIOUSLY WRONG. Look no further. than that. Nev

I have not studied the detail of how photo voltaic arrays actually work but while they produce some power on cloudy days it is small compared to full sun. The angle at which the suns rays reach the panel also has a profound effect. Heat is also the enemy of PV cells and they produce less power in mid Summer when the sun may be directly overhead at a perfect angle of 90 degrees than they do in Spring when the angle is not so good but it is cooler. My system tracks the power output in real time & it is very clear when a cloud obscures the sum even for only a minute or 2. Most PV systems are fixed so face whatever direction and angle the roof is. Tracking the suns movement (though it really is the other way around) to get a perfect angle will provide the best results but there is a technology cost plus the system uses some power to operate & then there is maintenance. There are some solar farms that use tracking but most do not as it is not economically viable.

Not really, Jerry MAY be able to in theory but at great cost and much less value than the original, inevitably.. Nev

A vehicle, even no longer in production can be reproduced

Good riddance but he did fight for Jabiru. Birmingham and Fletcher (moderates) are going too. Nev

Don't PUNISH a good vehicle. Punish the driver. Nev

The only thing I would add, OME, is that we really need to raise public awareness of the fact that driving a vehicle is NOT a universal right. If our legislators REALLY want to reduce the road toll, introduce compulsory crushing of the vehicle for serious or repeated motoring offences. No matter who owns the vehicle. Let the chips fall where they may.

A seemingly simple question, but one whose answer is incredibly complex. I think that Jerry has hit the nail on the head when he mentions "situational awareness", and consideration for others, which one could label as "courtesy". A practical definition of "speeding" has to include a reference to the environment in which a vehicle is moving. The speed limit in a carpark, or service station forecourt is the same as that applying to the adjacent road. However, 10 - 15 kph in a carpark can be taken to be a dangerous speed (toddlers running away; vehicles reversing out of parking spots). A speed of 118 on a freeway with a speed limit of 110 is much less dangerous to others. I believe that 100 kph is the correct limit for the open road, simply because it allows for good fuel consumption in most vehicles, as well as allowing for estimating arrival times at the next town. In urban areas, the frequent changes in speed limits is very distracting, especially if those changes are only of 10 kph. I'll accept 40 kph around schools and 50 kph in residential areas, then 60 and 80 on feeder and arterials. However I abhor 70 and 90 kph zones. As for a relentless policing of absolute adherence to speed limits, my opinion is that more acceptance of "herd mentality" should be made. What I mean by "herd mentality" is that when a platoon of vehicles is travelling along a road, the majority of drivers will travel at a speed which the consensus decides is "safe". That speed may be five to ten kph above the posted speed limit. It is the driver who tries to pass through the platoon and get further ahead who should be dealt with. The greatest danger to others on our roads currently is intoxication as a result of substance abuse. Drugs, both legal and illegal are present in more people now than in the past. One result of RBT has been reducing the number of persons driving with blood alcohol concentrations above 0.180 grams of alcohol per 100 ml of blood (High Range PCA). There are still people driving drunk, but not as drunk as people were before RBT. I repeat what I said in an earlier post - we need to recognise that operating a motor vehicle on a public road is as much a life skill to be introduced into the high school curriculum as being safe online, or dealing with interpersonal violence. Therefore, I say that driver education should be included as a part of the Physical, Health Education curriculum, even if that education only deals with the theory of motor vehicle operation.

I am going to go out on a limb, but as n ex-highway patrolman, OME is one of the more formally trained drivers on here. So I will defer to his better judgement on matters.. A long time ago - maybe 20 years, there was an editorial in The Age, where the author advocated, to save lives, the speed limit should be dropped to 50kph, everywhere. This was before there were 50kph limits and lower, I think. Her sole argument was that speed kills. This wasn't too much after I moved here, where, at the time, speed limits were really guides - at least on more open roads. I found this out on a drive from London to Swansea (to fly a De Havilland Vampire). Along the M4, which is the main 3 lane each way motorway to Wales, I steadfastly stuck to the 70mph limit. I was the slowest on the road, and when a little old lady overtook me, I decided it was time to enjoy the ride. On the way back, I got that little Pugeot 106 on a downhill bit up to 100mph and someone still overtook me. The average speed was about 80 - 85mph. And yes, I did drive at those speeds on the mototways, when traffic and weather conditions permitted, and leaned that the British drivers were far more situationally aware than their antipodean cousins when it came to driving. Also, they were incredibly considerate compared to those same antipodean cousins. They would move over to let you in (or, in urban/suburban roads, stop to let you out of a driveway or side street). When I did my motorcycle licence here, yes, if you spend even 1mph over the limit when you were tested, you would fail. But the training and the test was also about situational awareness, consideration, and getting on with it.. Don't dawdle, the road is full of others who want to get from a to b. This was a stark contrast to the learning I did in Melbourne, which was, apart from the not speeding, you can and should dawdle, and don't worry about other road users, that's their problem. Anyway, in response to this article, I did a bit of research and interesting, where the Europeans are far more speed demons, the only country that fared worse on any measure other than absolute road deaths and life changing injuries, Australia fared worse than all but France. Yes, even Italy was better than Aus. Whether these were per capita, per licensed/learner drivers/riders/etc, per registered vehicles, per miles driven,, Australia was miles behind most European countries (where, for many seat belts seem optional), except Italy was a close third last, and France pipped us. So, it is a lot more than just keep your bloody speed down. I recall the frustration I had with Melbourne drivers when I moved back there. Mo dog, they were incredibly selfish, and largely unaware of their surroundings.. In the UK, they do enforce road laws, but it seems more about practical safety than what I consider ideological speed limits, probably designed as revenue raisers, which was even admitted as such by a Victorian minister of something or other. Over here, you can still speed and not be pursued, as long as you are safe. But, even if you are under the limit, but dangerously driving, you will have the book chucked at you. Of course, we have speed cameras, but the fixed ones are very obvious. And yes, they are a bit more binary in their application. However, things have changed here. Even though, over the years, I have mellowed,, and only do 75 - 80 max on the Motorways, but the driving here has got much worse. I am going to go right wing nut job, but particularly around London, where there is a high ratio of immigrants, as in "new" Brits, the driving is appalling compared to what it was. Anyway, @old man emu, what is your take on speeding.. Is a relentless pursuit of the speed limit that much safer, or what would you consider the higher priority road safety measures to take? BTW, I did respond to the article in The Age with the facts and sources; I never got a response.