Electric Echo Blog

While driving down to Canberra from Brisbane last week (1,300 km - not in my E-E!) I was shocked by just how dry some of this “wide brown land” is. We traveled via the New England highway which runs parallel with the NSW coast and about 150km inland. Much of the land, for hundreds of kilometers, was almost only dust. As is my bent, all the while thinking “Global Warming… Global Warming…”.

So when I read a rather timely interview by The Australian newspaper with CSIRO climate expert Barrie Hunt, I was very interested. Mr Hunt states quite categorically (”very, very highly likely”) that this drought is not due to climate change but fits within the range of natural variability. He’s studied 10,000 years of climate modeling and says over that period there has been 30 occasions where there has been 8-year or longer droughts (on average = 1 every 333 years).

(more…)

One of the most positive discoveries for me on my E-E journey has been the understanding that for just a few cents more per kWh I can purchase “green” electricity from any green generator that’s connected to the NEM.

The National Electricity Market (this link is a really interesting read) describes the trading of the Australian electricity “pool” created by the generation and transmission of power, which is all interconnected, from Port Douglas in Queensland to Port Lincoln in South Australia (4,000km), including Tasmania.

Of course electricity isn’t really green, black or brown but the technology used to generate it is. So electricity generated by hydro in Tassie or a wind farm in SA or biomass right here in BrizVegas can be extracted from the power point in my bedroom to run the computer that I’m typing into right now!

Yes, I know that I’m easily excited but there it is, my dream; our NEM gradually changing colour over the years from dirty black, to less dirty brown, to pristine green. How? Market forces, supply and demand, you buy it - they’ll make it.

Now I know all the debunkers will chip in here and wail “base load” and “intermittent supply”. My response is; real-cost, hydro and vision.

When Gary Donaldson, Manager for the Technical Training & Support Unit of the Queensland automobile club RACQ, contacted me about displaying my EV at one of their Technical Familiarisation Evenings for their Road Patrols, Vehicle Inspectors and other technical staff tonight, I was a little apprehensive.

It’s one thing to lightly discuss the technical aspects of an EV with the general public but it’s entirely a different matter to have dozens of automotive professionals poking around the underside of your car asking lots of questions. I was expecting more than a healthy serve of skepticism from those who are well entrenched in the automobile industry but to my surprise the mood was one of polite genuine interest. Some may have thought I’d wasted my time and money but nobody said it or even hinted at it.

Perhaps they were just being friendly or maybe even some of them saw merit in what I’d done, either way it made for a very pleasant evening despite having to answer the three R’s (Range, Recharge, Regeneration) about a thousand times!