lol so the FWC made the ruling about months and the ability to apply for permanent part time for employees, but can't employers just say no?

If they have to say yes, can't they just fire/re-hire you or someone else (via minimisation of shifts)?

-PB

The Government has stopped releasing pollution data that used to be announced on a quarterly basis.

A Freedom of Information request by the Australian Conservation Foundation reveals updates by the National Greenhouse Gas Inventory haven't been made public since late last year.

The documents appear to show that the data was ready for release and has been seen by the Minister Josh Frydenberg"


And the info the actually got was mostly redacted.

Dodgy af twats.

-PB

Yeah. On the other hand we have the biggest grid scale battery in the world getting built in SA. Jay 2 - Frydenberg 0

Charged by gas and coal...... We'll get there one day. I don't believe that this tech will solve long-term energy problems in SA.

It's based at the site of a windfarm but sure I guess sometimes  it'll get electricity from those sources.

Your premier was stating that they want to contribute gas they're producing to charge it on Sky news.

A lot of publicity and money for a battery that will keep the lights on for 11 minutes. 

The battery will charge itself from the grid and sure if there's no wind power being generated from the site it'll take it from elsewhere. Electricity is just electrons flowing on the network, you can't really control where they go. There was a ridiculous hatchet job on SA Today Tonight last night claiming (amongst other things) that the wind power from the site is actually going to Canberra. How that happens when we have only one interconnector going through Victoria is beyond me.

This is a great article on what the battery will do, just need to get past the headline (which is an attack on the Alan Jones' of this world rather than joe public's comments).
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/12/commentators-who-dont-understand-the-grid-should-butt-out-of-the-battery-debate

Does a good job of debunking the "keeps the lights on for 11 minutes" detractors. 

I hope it works. Adelaide are probably the best when it comes to sustainability. 

They need to go underground with their major transmission lines. Bloody wind :laugh:

I read the article built it didn't address anything other than claim that the battery addresses the frequency stability issue. 

That's all fine, and I can accept that. It's also an energy storage device at the end of the day. But it can only supply for 11 minutes and to only 30,000 (and that number is generous) households. 

For me, the project looks interesting. It will be interesting to see if it works. But this is in actual fact another experiment which could go terribly wrong. The entire concept is very high risk and extremely expensive for the amount of energy that it can store. I also do not like the fact that this contract was virtually made on twitter - something Trump hasn't even done as yet. It's a very desperate move by the SA Government and I am happy such antics and gambles are not done here in WA. Even our new Government ditched the 50% carbon emissions target, and should be commended for this because the key is in fact energy security, a sustainable transition to Green Energy and low power prices. 

The only good project they had initiated was the undertaking to build another Gas plant. This is as guaranteed tried and proven way to address the issues. This battery is not something anyone can hang their hat on. 

The number 1 issues on energy are security of supply and energy prices. Any Government that does not understand this will pay the price. There are people making a conscious decision to not turn on their heating this winter because they are scared of the cost and not being able to afford this. This hits the most vulnerable, elderly and children too in disadvantaged circumstances. In summer, they will not turn on any cooling even in heatwaves for the same reason. This is the number one issue out there in the community. These batteries will just make things worse. 

Someone please work out the cost per unit of energy and compare it across the spectrum. No cost analysis done at all. 

Fair enough. Ultimately you're doing exactly what the article is saying and looking at the battery as a single solution rather than a complimentary part of the solution to the whole problem and criticising it for that. I don't think it's possible to explain it any clearer than this so if it isn't enough for you then nothing probably will.

When have SA govs made good national interest based decisions looking at the big picture....
The place is/has been a basket case for as long as we've known and this is the next great thing in the future ?
Ketan Joshi - a Tony Robbins type for the renewable industry. the messiah.
You know what mcjules - the end of the rainbow looks a beautiful cheap grid - lets re visit once its up and running and settled and see what consumer bills are then.

No I can accept that it's only part of a solution. That is admitting it isn't a solution.

So if it is part of the solution, then what is the other part? The new Gas Plant? I would describe the new Gas Plant the SA Government announced as the ultimate solution. If something is going to solve the crisis, then surely it would be things like the Gas Plant they promised to build. It's not Green, but its reliable and it isn't that dirty like coal is. It's the intermediary energy source between Coal and Green. We need more Gas Plants all over Australia. Then shut down the coal stations one by one, in a thoughtful way and slowly add more Green technologies. 

What part of this isn't in the national interest? The national interest is to have grid stability in all places around the country so that we can have a productive economy. The current instability has been caused by the privatised market and the failure of policy direction at the Federal level since 2013 (and really before that because there wasn't bi-partisan support from the LNP).

I'm not going to bother telling you about all the other initiatives the state government have put in place outside of the energy crisis as you'd likely scoff at them. However's there's been a concerted effort to try and revamp the economy now that the Abbott destroyed the manufacturing industry in this state and one of them in particular Gigcity is an excellent initiative for my industry.

The battery has a chance to lower spot prices here as it can respond quicker than gas and therefore keep prices lower overall. However there are so many variables that could increase the price anyway so it won't prove anything.

Easy to blame the battery and wind farms in SA for high prices, however all states are seeing significant price increases at the moment. Funny that...

Yes the other part is the gas plant but more importantly it's a public owned gas plant. The issues with gas are:
1. Gas is currently very expensive because the gas suppliers are selling our gas to overseas markets and there's not enough of it to supply us cheaply. 
2. Gas plants game the system to spike prices to maximise profits
3. Gas plants while relatively quick to come online compared to coal, aren't really quick enough compared to how quickly supply can drop from wind and therefore at the moment some gas plants run at very low outputs so that they can ramp up almost immediately (costing money)

Can't do much about the first issue at a state level, the feds fucked it up (both Labor and Libs) for whole east coast and it's driving up prices in every state. 

Having a state owned gas plant means that they can compete and prevent most of the price gaming.

A battery can dispatch power almost instantaneously leading to grid stability and less of those ridiculous spot prices that often get quoted.

Gas is definitely a transition fuel, pumped hydro is also a solution that needs to be in the mix as it has much higher capacity and almost as dispatch-able as batteries. We need more solar, more home batteries, a smart grid etc

The main thing is, renewables are not a problem. The state government has been trying for ages via COAG to solve issues with the market and the emissions targets but the Feds are too stubborn and it's costing us all.

SA is the only state in Oz that could benefit from wave technology. The only problem is cost as the wave technology is most efficient at great distance from population centres.

Spot prices are a joke but not entirely unreasonable. The owners of private facilities have to take their generators off standby to produce power. Doing so would cost money. However, gouging is almost guaranteed. The problem we will always have are peak periods of extreme weather. Maintaining capacity at all times for these peak periods which are few and far between is uneconomical.

South Australia also has like 50 years of gas from the Cooper Pedy basin. I can't see it being left alone.

Another Greens politician is stepping down over citizenship issues.

-PB

Yeah it's not unreasonable it's just that gas prices aren't cheap. 

Yeah, strange but I bet there are a few others too.

I've been an italian citizen from birth but wasn't aware of it until 2003.

I'm not sad to see Larissa Waters go after some of her lets say "poorly thought out and researched" campaigns against several companies where even in the face of facts she remained a good parrot.

Less disappointed with this one than Ludlam. He was one of the few senators that actually understood technology.

Ludlam seemed like a decent bloke and a less 'political' politician (if that makes sense).

Larissa Waters needs to be commended for her work for womens equality.

How can all this be honest mistakes?

I thought our Senators were rather intelligent and brainy people. Didn't they even suspect that if they were born in NZ or Canada, they would carry citizenship for that country. Didn't these supposedly intelligent people think of checking? 

Duh! 

Honestly, how can you not be aware of it? If you were born there, you have the citizenship. Not only that, but you can't live there for more than a certain period without getting drafted into the Italian Military. You knew that right? 

Any Green that goes down is a good thing. Have a read of their website to see how nutso they are. 

Takes some balls to be a liberal politician on Q&A, it's basically you vs everyone else

Would've certainly liked to hear more of John Stackhouse's thoughts on Islam as he seems well versed in it.

Seems to me the constitution is pretty outdated, who f*cking cares if someone has a duel citizenship, seriously.

Sad to see Ludlam go. 

For a green, he actually stood up for regular people, you can't deny him that.  Like a Xenophon but less preachy.  

It's not as clear cut as you intimate:

Read these.
Jus sanguinis - Wikipedia
Jus soli - Wikipedia

As a personal example I know for a fact that children of expats that are born in Singapore aren't Singaporean.  It states as much on the birth certificates issued.