kgwilson

The water temperature about 15 NM off the coast here at Corindi beach is currently 27 degrees. Normally it would be 24 to 25 degrees at this time of the year so 2 to 3 deg hotter than normal. Local fishers are complaining about no fish anywhere so I reckon they have all gone somewhere cooler. No cyclones yet but they will start forming within the next month or so & may track South & with the warm water could get pretty intense. We'll see.

CATL are now providing between 1 & 2 million km warranties on their EV batteries. The chemistry and longevity is improving all the time and solid state batteries will be available for some Chinese EVs before the end of this year. The MG4 I bought now has a 10 year 250,000 km warranty on both car & battery. In China the MG4 called the Mulan has a lifetime warranty on the battery transferable to new owners. Honda & Toyota have been promising solid state batteries for over 5 years but have not been able to crack the technology while CATL the worlds largest battery manufacturer said nothing & quietly achieved it. There is still a lot of misinformation and disinformation about EV batteries supported by fossil fuel companies & the right wing press though they are slowly losing any credibility they had. While Teslas are great cars I'm glad I didn't buy one purely because of madman Musk who now looks to be a malignant narcissist like his orange mate.

That is 4.826 metres so the record probably still stands. Cardwell only gets rain during the monsoon wet season & very little for the rest of the year.

Albo has had a yarn to Trump & Trump has called him a "very fine man" & is considering tariff exemptions due to the US trade surplus with Australia. Dutton of course won't give Albo any credit. Politics Aarrgghh!

I've said it before, Trump is a Malignant Narcissist, diagnosed by multiple Clinical Psychologists. He is incapable of feeling empathy and will do anything to be front and centre of everything. He couldn't care less about anything else.

Musk was a visionary, a bit like Steve Jobs of Apple. Apple now are the 3rd largest mobile phone maker after Samsung & Xaiomi now that Jobs is dead. He was reputedly an arsehole but developed a following of iphone fans that were almost like disciples. Apple will end up like Nokia, once by far the biggest mobile phone company. iphones have become boring with few new or innovative features and are far too expensive. An iphone 16 looks almost the same as an iphone 11 Now Musk is orchestrating the demise of the company he created with his antics and ultra right wing concepts. He is the richest person on the planet & was given a $US65 Billion salary in 2024 from Tesla. The US justice dept would not approve it even though it was approved by Teslas shareholders & would be one of the reasons he jumped in to bed with Trump The EV industry is far bigger than just Tesla and while in some markets the increases slowed in 2024, world wide the increase in sales was pretty much as expected, championed of course by the Chinese who now produce by far the most EVs and are way ahead in innovation and battery technology as well as almost every part of the support infrastructure from high speed charging, 5 minute battery swap stations etc. Many of the legacy auto makers will not survive even in the medium term. There were 17. 1 million new EVs sold globally in 2024 up from 13.6 million in 2023 & 10.4 million in 2022. About 114,000 EVs were sold in Australia in 2024, still a small percentage of cars sold but a record high.

Trump has now back pedalled & at the 11th hour has delayed the tariffs for a month. The damage though has been done & Canada & Mexico will never have any faith in Trumps government (if they ever had any before) & will be working on strategies to ensure they will never get conned this way again. He is now threatening the EU as well & wants Ukraines rare earths for his continued support. Bully boy tactics only work for a short term until the bully becomes completely ostracized.

That is a complete CON by Microsoft. Any computer running windows 10 will run perfectly well on Windows 11. Microsoft puts a message on the security settings that say the computer does not have the resources to run Windows 11 & if you try to upgrade it won't. BS. I have an old office Dell 9020 with 8GB of RAM & 512GB hard drive & it installed and runs perfectly. There are a number of youtube video instructions on how to install windows 11 on ANY computer. This is just one

It was an unjust war championed by Mcarthyism scare mongering and our politicians grabbed the coat tails of the US system. Our soldiers were the best they could be and politics did not enter their collective conscience. They did their duty and should always be celebrated for it. It was just a very sad and unfortunate turn of events that much of the public finally saw through the lies and deceit and the divisions in our society then meant returning veterans were very badly treated. This is history now and we know the truth but I still feel bad for the returned veterans and utter contempt for the politicians of the day.

The climate has always changed, but over thousands and millions of years. The change that human intervention has caused is over 300 years. It was very subtle in the first 250 years with only a few thinking there was any cause for alarm before 1980. In 1750 the world population was about 791 million. It is now 8.2 Billion. Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution we have dug up about 70% of the fuel that took more than 3.2 billion years to establish and BURNED it. The consequences are now being felt at an ever increasing rate. We now have the means to measure everything in detail and establish changes through the ages through analysis of core samples from ice, rock and sediment. The science is irrefutable but some choose to ignore it. This can be a head in the sand attitude, greed, political advantage or just pure ignorance. Take your pick.

As I remember Trumps own description of himself was "A very stable Genius". Well after all he is a Malignant Narcissist.

Colombia turned the US military aircraft away as the deportees were treated as criminals with hand and foot restraints. These people are Colombian citizens and deserve to be treated with respect which is why Petro changed his mind and is sending Colombian aircraft to pick them up. How do you think our government would react if the same thing happened to Australians who found themselves in a similar predicament? They may not have had the appropriate documentation to be in the US but they had jobs, families, homes and lifestyles. There are about 12 million illegal immigrants in the US. If they all get deported who is going to do all the work?

Trump won because he got the most electoral college votes. He also won because he got the most votes of any candidate (the popular vote), but more than 50% of the voters didn't vote for him and only 64% of eligible voters actually voted. According to Trump that is a landslide victory, NOT.

Yes it was. It was designed to stop people from the GDR escaping to West Germany for a better life. It was a prison wall.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/world-news/360557051/mr-trump-f-danish-politicians-greenland-stand

Trump didn't even get 50% of the vote & the margin between him & Harris was 1.62%. This was the 4th smallest margin since 1960, that's 65 years ago. The margin was less than half of Bidens margin 4 years ago. The bluff & bluster right now is Trumps ego out in full bloom but there are processes and laws that mean he just can't "Executive Order" his way to make any meaningful change. He only really has 2 years anyway as the mid terms could very easily lose his senate & congress majorities. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/the-size-of-donald-trumps-2024-election-victory-explained-in-5-charts He tried to ban anyone from the middle east entering the country in 2017 & that was shot down almost instantly. His billionaire mates will desert like rats from a sinking ship when the excrement hits the fan. It is just a matter of time. The only problem is the MAGA nutters & with all of the pardons for the insurrection they will feel even more emboldened. Civil war is a distinct possibility when things begin to go badly.

Trump is a MALIGNANT NARCISIST & the best Con man the world has ever seen. That explains his MO IMHO. The problem is he is in charge of the most powerful country on earth (from tomorrow 3am), just. China will soon take over. They already have the largest army & their navy is massive plus their technological rise has already outstripped Silicon Valley & their car industry is far larger than the US & Japan combined. China is the worlds factory & despite the problems with the property sector they don't have $37 trillion of debt. Chinas debt is less than $30 billion. Trumps most beautiful word in the English language (Tariff) will come back to bite him hard in the end. The rest of the world will just have to ride out the impending chaos, backtracking and MAGA failures for the next 4 years.

I'd prepare a bunch of atheist statements & set up a rule to choose one as a reply each time their emails arrive. The only problem is they might view this as a challenge to try and "save" you.

Hybrids had a boost in popularity that now seems to have waned somewhat. Personally i think they are the worst of both worlds. They are cheaper than full EVs and dealers were making greater profits from their sales. They are though far more complex with both types of propulsion and need oil changes and transmission maintenance and still produce fumes from fossil fuels. The price is reflected in the tiny battery often with only about 50 km of range and they have a very poor fire risk rating with the evidence showing they are more than 100 times more likely to catch fire than an EV and also much worse than a standard petrol or diesel powered vehicle. They appeal to people who have range anxiety. Car importers now have to comply with stricter emissions regulations as from 1/1/25 so if they continue to import vehicles with lower standards they will have to make it up by selling other more efficient vehicles to reduce their overall CO2 emissions. The new standards produce fewer emissions while increasing fuel efficiency. We didn't have any standards till now and were on a par with Russia so we got cars with the dirtiest engines. Our new standards are still way behind the Euro standards though. Imports of European cars though have had to comply with the Euro standards which have been in place since the original Euro 1 standard set in 1992. The current Euro 6D standard was set for all new vehicles produced in the EU since last September.

A friend of mine who has since died, an ex pilot, airfield owner & cane farmer from near Yamba, built a new house on his farm & was quoted 30k for 2 power poles, transformer, plus cables & connection fees to connect his new house back in 2011 or 12. What he did was get a heap of solar panels, an inverter, and at the time a lot of lead acid batteries for storage and a backup diesel generator for long periods of little sun. Everything in his house and sheds is electric including air conditioning, cooking and refrigeration plus some big freezers. Hot water is from an electric heat pump. The entire system cost less than 30k. I was having a chat to him after 5 or 6 years regarding how it was all going & how often the diesel generator needed to be brought in. The answer surprised me as he said the only time the generator had been used was every few months when he started and ran it to make sure it still worked. He'd never had to use it as a backup. In my own hangar I have a 25 watt solar panel with a simple controller connected to a 12 volt deep cycle battery. I have an inverter and run lights off that plus some 3 pin sockets for appliances like the vacuum cleaner & fans and I charge my power tools & aircraft batteries and a winch to pull the aircraft in. It won't run my compressor or pressure washer but now I have an EV that is no problem either. If I was building a new house I'd seriously consider going off grid. It just takes a bit of knowledge & planning.

Community batteries are still connected to the grid. If the battery fails or when it runs flat you draw from the grid. All managed by software like everything else these days.

Community batteries are a good option for a street or suburb of homeowners with solar panels. They can be plonked pretty much anywhere just like sub stations. Homeowners who are part of the scheme feed their power in to the battery during the day when their solar is producing a surplus and draw on the battery at night. The concept is simple, has already been proven but few have been created or are operating. You get paid for the power you feed in and pay for what you draw out, less of course the costs associated with installing, operating and maintaining the system. To me this makes more sense than putting in your own home battery given the exorbitant installed cost of a 13 kWh Tesla Powerwall at $13-15,000. Of course if you have an electric vehicle you have a mobile battery of 40 to 100 kWh & now the government has approved V2H & V2G that will appeal to some though maybe not if your car is parked at your work every day.

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.

There are plenty of qualified Electricians who in my opinion are not competent. The cables in the ceiling of my house were loose and all over the place when I bought the place new. Some of this was caused by the insulation installers and some by the Electrician. Switches, sockets & junction boxes were generally OK but some showed bare wire as the stripped end was too long and not doubled or twisted when clamped down with the grub screws. Then the cables behind the meter and distribution board were a birds nest though all connected correctly. I always ensure everything is neat and nicely looped. I first became interested in electrical stuff when I worked for my flatmate Electrician in London in 1973-74 as a Sparky's mate. We rewired a row of 5 story Victorian mansions behind Kensington Palace. I got to know the certifiers & I signed a lot of the Final Inspection forms even though they knew I was not the boss.

I can easily do all that myself as I once was an electrical engineer. I installed my EVSE myself & all it cost was 12 metres of 6mm TPS and a RCCB (residual current circuit breaker). Total cost under $90.00. An electrician quoted me (under 10 metres and through 1 wall only $600.00. Over 10 metres more than 1 wall away from $1000.00 to $1,500.00 depending on complexity. The V2H & V2G solutions automate everything including the solar so power will flow from solar to the car or house or grid and vice versa I have done similar to yours for running 3 x 11 kVA generators and distributing the load at our SES shed. This time though I designed the system & a sparky installed it. Very simple & no power factor to consider. I separated all power points lighting, water heating, stoves etc based on load with 3 position circuit breakers & isolator switches for each. Nothing to plug or unplug. Just fire up the generators when the power goes out and flip the switches & the same when the power comes back & then just go to the shed & turn the generators off. Automating the process