I live in a relatively safe part of Victoria as far as fires go. It is mainly grass fire risk, and the majority of fires are started by lightning strikes, machinery malfunction or misuse, or embers from other fires. Even so, the risk is real, and ever present at this time of the year. This is the time of year that normal farming activities become risks of starting fires. A harvester hitting a rock can produce enough sparks to set fire to the tinder-dry crop, and it may not be immediately obvious to the operator. While we hope that farmers don't engage in risky activity during a TFB, at some stage they have to harvest or lose the crop.
I'm also a contractor. That means that if I am not at the computer, I am not doing billable work, and I don't get paid. I'm not pointing this out to seek pity. It is just a fact of life. A data point. As a contractor working in the computer industry I'm probably luckier than others. I can at least do some work outside normal working hours. Others are not so fortunate.
I also live on acreage and have animals and poultry. My wife and I are getting outside every half hour or so to water down pens and check on the animals. I know I'll have to bury some birds this year that will have died from heat stress, despite all of our precautions. It happened last year, and will continue to happen in the coming years.
A lot has been said about this fire season, which has really only just begun, and climate change and politicians and getting the ADF to help out. A lot has been well meaning, a lot scathing, and a lot misinformed. Let me give my take on it.
We are currently in an existential crisis. The climate emergency is not waiting for politicians to make up their mind. It is here, it is now. If you still believe that climate change is a hoax then fuck off now. You are just making it easier for politicians to put their heads in the sand. There is no credible scientific evidence of your claim - the climate is getting hotter, it is caused primarily by burning fossil fuels. Get over it and deal with it. I have no sympathy for your position. Even the oil companies have known what they were doing for more than 30 years, and like the tobacco companies before them they have spent billions in trying to undermine the science and get politicians to sit on their hands. Unlike tobacco, the climate is completely non-selective when it comes to its victims. Nobody is immune to the effects, no matter how much you might like to think otherwise. Stop enabling them.
Politicians like to say we need to go slowly or we might hurt the economy. Sorry, that one doesn't wash either. Investment in renewables, and in the grid to enable renewables to take a bigger role, is going to bolster the economy. Even now renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels in energy generation - one of the largest contributors to CO2. They say that we have to be mindful not to hurt the coal industry because it is a money earner and if we don't dig it up someone else will. Why don't we take the $2 billion or so that we currently give to the mining industry to prop it up and instead spend it on bolstering renewables? That would pay dividends beyond the surplus-fanatics dreams. But no, somehow coal mining is sacred. The car industry was left to die on the vine, and that employed something like 3 times what coal mining does. Automation is seeing less jobs in coal. On any purely free market view, renewables is where the action is. Coal mining is on life support.
The finger is often pointed to India and China as building new coal-fired power stations so what we do doesn't matter. I don't know about China, but I do know that in India many of the proposed coal generators are unlikely ever to be built due to water stress and air quality. Even now two of the largest are 7 and 9 years behind schedule with not even a sod turned in the latter case. In India there are something like 17 provinces that are now declared as "eternally in drought". There is intense pressure in India to cut coal. They are facing similar issues to us - politicians unwilling to wean themselves from the teat of the fossil fuel lobby. But action is happening, and things are moving quickly. Watch this space...
How do I know this? As I said I work in the computer industry. One of the companies I work with is a non-profit that is already achieving greenhouse gas reductions with innovative solutions. They work with electricity grids worldwide, and with governments and other stakeholders. Their system is already legislated to be used to make energy storage systems throughout California carbon negative. I.e. they will be removing CO2 from the Californian grid by clever algorithms to ensure they don't charge when the grid is powered by coal or gas. I've seen the data. They are now working with Google to extend that coverage worldwide using satellite imaging to detect emissions. This is just a tip of the iceberg. There are hundreds of groups actively working out how to reduce carbon in a way that is compatible with a free-market economy. It is possible, it is happening, and it will only accelerate.
Back to politicians. Well one in particular. Scott Morrison. Our Prime Minister. The guy who touted a piece of coal through parliament. The guy who was missing in action and only returned when fire fighters died. The guy who thinks that coming back the day he was expected is cutting short his holiday. The guy who won't talk about climate change. The guy who thinks saying sorry for people taking offence is anything other than passive aggressive insult. The guy who doesn't understand that leadership isn't just having the title and saying you are on top of things while sipping a mai tai. That guy. I think I'm done there.
What can ScoMo do? A lot. I can't think of another PM that has been as cavalier in his duty than ScoMo. You are there to govern for all, not just the chosen. You could, for instance, show up on a fireground and hand water bottles out. Sure, it doesn't do anything, but it does show that you are interested in "the quiet Australians" you so often go on about. You could have made a few quick calls and got some food and water supplies to the firegrounds. You could have declared a climate emergency, as well as a national emergency and all that that entails. You could have given a damn. But you didn't. You don't. You can't.
Meawhile the chatter on the CFA radio is now almost constant. Fires in multiple areas in our region. I'm still tense, still waiting, still haven't had to turn out - yet.
]]>Solar PV (Photo Voltaic - or the direct conversion of sunlight to electricity) is at an all-time high, generating jobs across the globe. Even better, it generates jobs in rural and regional communities. Battery storage systems are now being deployed at grid-scale for stabilisation and time-shifting of available renewables. Software to be able to directly provide demand-side responses to the cleanliness of the grid are now becoming available. All of these together, along with wind and hydro, are coming at prices that undercut fossil fuels and make mincemeat of the arguments of the right that we can't have reliable power without fossil fuels. The South Australian grid-scale battery storage system has already saved that goverment millions of dollars just in grid stabilisation services, besides what it offers in time-shifting of demand for renewables.
To the politicians of Australia, why are you so tightly linked to the fossil economy? What dirt do they have on you that you are scared to go against them? Sure they provide heaps of funds for your election, but aren't you supposed to be governing for all Australians, and not just those with deep pockets (and deeper holes in the ground)? Surely even you can see that renewables provides better jobs growth than mining, and the related jobs in IT and tech to fine tune and realise the fullest potential are just off the scale when comparing to mining - which is becoming more and more automated, meaning less and less jobs.
Some of the biggest users of electricty on the globe are moving rapidly away from fossil fuels, many with idealism, but mostly because of pragmatism - it is far cheaper and it is easier to create meaningful change in emissions in the energy market. How is it that you've missed the boat on that? There are 3 states in the US actively pursuing virtual grid-scale batteries (similar to the proposal that South Australia had before the change of government) while there are at least 5 others lining up behind them to see how they go. And I'm not talking small states here - I'm talking about some of the largest economies in the US. All of the top US tech and retail giants have moved to or are moving to 100% renewable energy, and many are demanding it in their supply chain. Yet here in Australia we still think that burning dead dinosaurs is the future. It isn't. It isn't even the present. It is the past. Get over it. Catch up with what the state of the art is - and it isn't that oxymoron "clean coal".
I'm currently working with some fantastic people whose software can virtually eliminate carbon from the grid based on modifying demand. It is exciting to see that some of the biggest electricity users, and grid operators, are looking at this to enable their future. Yet in Australia our politicians don't even give a damn about farmers going bankrupt due to drought, because if they are bankrupt they can't bankroll your election fund. To the voters of Australia - demand your right to a livable planet, if not for you, for the next generation. Knock on your local member's door and demand that they stop pandering to coal and start doing the right thing.
]]>Our Saeco Talea Giro Plus automatic coffee machine bit the dust a year or so ago, at Christmas, while we had guests - so it hasn't been popular. I'd replaced the power board as it kept blowing fuses, but that again did so - so it was stuck in a corner in pieces as I contemplated my options. The other night I got to work and managed to get the beasty working again. Primarily it just didn't like the over voltage situation here that we finally got sorted out when it was causing random shutdowns on our solar inverter.
Parts for a power tool battery charger arrived, only to find that I'd ordered the wrong case style, in both cases. Firstly I ended up with a 3225 (1210) style SMD resistor instead of a 3216 (1206), and they were tightly squeezed so the extra few millimetres meant that they'd be on top of each other. In a similar vein I ordered a MOSFET with a TO-263 case (D2PAK) instead of a TO-252 (DPAK) case. I could probably have gotten away with that one as the better heat transfer would have worked in my favour, except that it would cover the screw hole for the associated heat sink - meaning I'd need to do board mods to get it to fit - which I wasn't really up to and the bloke I was fixing it for is overseas at the moment, so time isn't an issue.
I've also got parts on order for an inverter that we use in the car to power my laptop. It has been sitting in a box for almost a decade and died when I tried to use it to power a fluorescent light fitting - even though it was well within the wattage, I'm guessing the startup current and power factor was enough to kill it. It didn't blow the fuse, but it does seem to have taken out the primary MOSFETs. Everything else looks OK, so hopefully it will be a simple job once the parts are here.
]]>For many years (decades even) I've been building my own electronic gadgets and fixing the occasional electronic device. Just recently a power supply for our main computer gave up the ghost, and that was one thing I'd never even tried fixing before. Partly this is due to the inherent danger of a switch-mode power supply, where there are quite a few components at lethal voltages - and that is the section that quite often breaks. Partly it is because I haven't really looked into the design of such devices. With the colder months there is less time for doing work outside, so I thought it would be good to upgrade my skills and to invest in some tools and equipment that would make the job safer and easier. I've had a decent DSO (Digital Storage Oscilloscope) for a while, so the only major piece of equipment I needed was an isolation transformer. I've also got on order a nifty little component tester that should make checking those problematic electrolytics a lot easier.
So, over the weekend I cleaned up my desk and moved stuff around to try and get an ergonomic workspace that meant I wasn't dragging cables across the desk during soldering or desoldering or other testing. I'm reasonably pleased with the result.
So far I've manged to fix my Samsung S7 Edge that I ran over with a tractor, and a solar fence energizer that had stopped working. There are a number of items (including the power supply) waiting for parts, and a seemingly endless list of devices that need poking at. I guess my winter nights are sorted for the foreseeable future.
]]>The satellite service is already not living up to its promise, with plenty of chat on social media about the slowness and the flakiness of the service. This was all easy to predict as I've previously discussed, but what is of more concern is the use of "price signals" to manage the abysmal planning failures.
Currently if you want more than 75GB in a month, then you have to look at options other than satellite. Sure, you can get generous "off peak" allowances, but since when is the 6 hours between 1am and 7am a viable time for utilising that extra data? Are kids expected to do their homework in that timeslot? Are businesses expected to do their admin, that is increasingly internet-based, during that time? So, for around $115 or so you can get 50 usable GB (i.e. in a time that you are likely to be able to utilise it) on a satellite plan. Heaps, right? Not according to ABS. In December 2015, roughly 13 million subscribers downloaded over 1.7 exabytes, or an average of around 140GB per subscriber per month.
Looking at those figures will also reveal that data downloads have been doubling on a per-subscriber basis every 18 months or so. This is as a result of the increase in rich media, social media, collaboration tools and simply the fact that as more people are on the internet, they are engaging more with others. Business is carried out over the internet more. Shopping over the internet is on an upward spiral. Interacting with government is increasingly via the internet. Schooling is making increasing use of internet. Even the "self-serve" support which used to be text-based tutorials is moving more and more towards video. All of these factors mean that the 75GB limit is a joke, and forcing people to pay more for it is criminal.
Speaking of criminal, what about the alternatives? Mobile broadband? Remember the 1000GB per month I mentioned? If you want to get that on any mobile broadband plan you are looking at close to $10,000 per month rather than the $50 or so you'd be asked for on a real service. Yet many of us outside the major population centres have no choice but mobile broadband. The satellite isn't going to get to many areas until 2020, and even when it does we already have evidence it won't cut it.
City users are getting the benefits of the doubling of data, with their per-GB pricing dropping drastically to mere cents. Compare that with the over $3 per GB on the higher satellite plans or the $10 per GB on a mobile broadband plans and you can see that the digital divide is still with us, and widening. The NBN, and certainly the government inteference, have exacerbated this situation by having this bizzare idea that people in regional, rural and remote Australia somehow are not going to use the internet as much as their city cousins. With the competition in the agricultural sector there has seen a massive increase in the use of technology to reduce costs and improve efficiency. Yet without decent internet this technology is never going to reach its true potential.
Clever country? Fat chance.
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Jedda, my 9 year old Australian Terrier, today lost her "Golden Glow". That was her kennel name when we got her. Born on ANZAC day, she was as tough as they come, but it appears that liver cancer is tougher.
Jedda was vivacious, anarchic, over-the-top with a lust for life that sometimes left you speechless - or at least hoarse from yelling at her. She loved nothing more than a long walk, however there was never a walk long enough or with enough new friends, both human and canine, to meet, nor was the car ride short enough to get there. Until proven otherwise, Jedda approached every new person or dog as a potential friend, with her tail wagging and her eyes bright. If proven otherwise, she was a terrier through and through and would take on any dog, no matter how big.
She was a challenge at times, headstrong and feisty. We all have bites from trying to do something to her that she didn't like, such as cutting her nails. When meal times came around, or the lead was produced for a walk, she would bounce up and down until the plate was in front of her or the lead on her collar. You always knew she was around at dinner time. At least until last week.
The only saving grace was that the progression was quick, and we got a few hours to spend with her at the vet's before she was taken from us, both literally and metaphorically.
]]>*Your experience including the speeds actually achieved over the nbn™ network depends on the technology over which services are delivered to your premises and some factors outside our control like your equipment quality, software, broadband plans and how your service provider designs its network.
So back to the report. It states that even at 65% take up of the satellite service, the "mean busy hour throughput" will be 150kbps - or just about 3 times dialup speed. Hang on, isn't it supposed to be 25Mbps down, 5Mbps up? Well, here is where the marketing and the technical realities diverge. Unlike FTTP where you have a high-bandwidth connection that comes directly to the house, with satellite you have a limited number of transponders, each of which supplies a beam that covers a fixed geographical area. Each transponder is limited in its bandwidth, and that bandwidth is shared amongst the 500 to 15,000 premises covered by that beam. So if we actually use the service, the speed we get is determined by where we live and hence how many other premises are covered by the same beam. The more successful the marketing, the less useable is the outcome.
The interim satellite service (ISS) quickly became over subscribed as mentioned in the previous post, and the above report suggests that this is likely with the new service. Indeed one of the options it recommends is a third satellite coupled with expansion of the fixed wireless network. I live in central Victoria, and if you take a look at Exhibit 14-2 on page 87 of the report you will see that most of Victoria at just 65% uptake is likely to be oversubscribed.
One other fact coming from this report is that the service is not built to be future proof, and the timelines for getting people connected are starting to become very concerning. It is unlikely that the satellite/fixed wireless rollout will be completed before 2021, and even then the rate of growth of the customer base is likely to outstrip the supply by between 10 and 30% depending on the speed options being supplied (Exhibit 15-1 page 98). The satellites themselves have a design life of 15 years, so we need to revisit this before then at any rate. Yet the obvious choice of upgrading exchanges to support ADSL as an interim is simply not even considered.
Time for a bit of a reality check. Every town that has a school in it has an ADSL enabled exchange. Yet you cannot get ADSL in many of those towns. In the town just 10 minutes from here they have ADSL at the school, but no other premises has been able to get this with the excuse that there is no ADSL capacity at the exchange. Seriously? ADSL units come in various configurations, but usually start at 12 ports and go up from there. That means that there should be at least 11 other premises capable of being connected to ADSL, yet none can be.
Let's go back a step, in the Statement of Expectations signed by the Malcolm Turnbull - Minister for Communications and Mathias Cormann - Minister for Finance, the expectation is set that:
The Australian Government is committed to ... ensuring all Australians have access to very fast broadband as soon as possible, at affordable prices, and at least cost to taxpayers
There is also a recommendation in the report that NBN set expectations correctly. So why are we still getting the lie that we will have 25/5 Mbps speeds which will, in the main, be unattainable and that the NBN will be the same for all when quite clearly it cannot be? Why are obvious solutions that at least give "metro equivalent" capacity not being used? When will the digital divide really be a thing of the past?
]]>Australia has this wonderful new toy called the NBN - National Broadband Network, which was touted as bridging the digital divide between city and country. Yet it is fundamentally flawed, and is unlikely ever to provide the level of neutrality that its proponents crow about.
A bit of background first. Most telephone exchanges in Australia are connected by fibre optic cable and use an IP backbone. They have done for over a decade. This means they are easy to retrofit new equipment into and have plenty of capacity. Most cities enjoy ADSL2 capabilities, and even the town I mentioned initially has ADSL.
The NBN decided that the best solution was fibre to the premises for larger population areas, fixed wireless (basically point-to-point 3G LTE) to areas surrounding these and a satellite service to the rest of the country. All great stuff. Lots of expensive, flashy, techy gadgets that politicians love so much. Much talk of "infrastructure building" and "securing our future". Yet where I am I cannot get any of this. It is even uncertain that if the new satellites ever reach orbit that I'll be eligible. Even if I am eligible, satellite is not the same as a terrestrial service. And it is totally unneccessary.
The satellite service relies on two satellites that are not yet in orbit. There is also no guarantee that they will make it to orbit, as Mexico can attest to, or even the US. If they get to orbit it will have cost tens of billions of dollars to get there. Numbers being bandied around suggest at least 41 billion. Once there they are supposed to provide 25 Megabit per second download speed. What nobody tells you about is the latency that means that this doesn't directly translate into that amout of data being able to be transferred every second. I won't go into the boring details but if you look into how TCP/IP works you will see that there are always going to be issues with achieving this with a satellite. And it could have been avoided. Let us assume there are 1 million telephone exchanges outside the metro areas (there are nothing like that number, but let me continue). 41 billion dollars would see $41,000.00 available for each exchange to upgrade to the latest ADSL2 or better. Add to this the cost of the fixed wireless (somewhere around $13 billion), reduce the number of exchanges to something closer to the mark and you can see that what we are paying for the 2nd and 3rd tier of the NBN could have easily seen $100k per exchange for upgrades. Considering that even at the most exhorbitant estimates that would mean an additional 100 ADSL/ADSL2 connections per exchange, and more realistically several thousand, and you start to see that this entire system has been designed to be impressive, but not necessarily to meet the current or future needs of the community.
What we have, then, is ideology driving technology. There is nothing "future proof" about satellite, or about fixed wireless. These technologies are limited by physics in a way that telephone exchanges aren't. They have limited amount of radio frequency spectrum available, limited channels, longer latency and frankly will be obsolete before they are rolled out.
Ideology also plays into the limited options I currently have. Because I get a 3G signal here I am not allowed to get onto the interim satellite service, which is so over-subscribed that it is not worth attempting. 3G is considered "metro equivalent", even though I pay between 12 and 15 times the price of someone on ADSL for anything like the equivalent amount of data. Telstra say that this is because they don't charge different prices for regional vs city 3G - all very well, but they do charge different prices for 3G vs ADSL, and calling 3G equivalent to ADSL when there are caps on the data allocation that are way short of even the bottom end of the ADSL plans, and prices of data beyond that at up to 100 times that of even Telstra's ADSL plans, is disingenuous at the very least. This is ideology that initially looks grand - charging the same for the same service. On closer view however it is window dressing the ugly reality - there is no "same service". Just a short walk down the road and you cannot get 3g at all. I cannot get 3g from any other provider here, but I can if I walk up the hill.
So when do we get to bridge the "digital divide"? Or is that like most other political promises, just smoke and mirrors?
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