During the course of my work this week I had reason to visit a school in north-eastern New South Wales. That region has a reputation for attracting and fostering people with "alternative" views and values, particularly in regard to environmental protection and sustainable living. So it was that one of the teachers, knowing beforehand that I publish this blog, introduced me to a student who has a keen interest in permaculture and who is also active in a group centred around the Transition Towns concept (see link in my "highly recommended" sidebar).
Now, not that this blog has a huge world-wide audience or anything, I would like to give that student the opportunity to remain anonymous but at the same time see if I can't get a bit of discussion going here around a couple of the ideas that have come to mind as a result of our meeting.
I put that TT link over there ages ago and haven't looked at their site in months. I think they're clearly world leaders, forging a path to the future. What I'm not so sure about is how to make that path into a highway wide enough to take the cities along with the towns. I should revisit their site and see if there's been any progress on that subject.
One of the obvious things (to me) is that people in cities will need to grow food for themselves and their immediate community. More than that, they'll need to do so sustainably, recycling nutrients in efficient closed loops and doing it all with an absolute minimum of external energy inputs. In other words we need permaculture cities. Unfortunately the vast majority of city dwellers know nothing about growing anything.
Take me as an example: I have a borrowed copy of the 2nd edition of "Introduction to Permaculture" and recently bought the Digger's Club's "Australian Fruit & Vegetable Garden". I've been experimenting in the back yard for the past year or so, but so far have very little to show (or eat) as a result.
So, you thus-far anonymous student, if you're looking for school project ideas that combine IT with permaculture, you might consider starting an online library of training/instructional podcasts or other resources to help city folk like me with no horticultural knowledge transform our backyards and balconies into productive, sustainable food gardens. Seriously - was there ever a period in history prior to the present day where an entire generation of a civilisation had no idea how to grow their own food? We need that knowledge back again, and the internet provides a platform unlike anything else in human history for the distribution of knowledge.
The internet might well be our best defence against falling into another dark age as oil production falls. We stand to lose a great deal of our personal mobility. It just won't be feasible for people like me to travel hundreds of kilometers in a single day just to provide some brief specialist service. But if we can maintain and build on our communications infrastructure and the library of publicly-accessible knowledge then the physical isolation won't necessarily be a barrier to skills and ideas.
What I would like to do now is to invite you all to hit the comments and have a bit of a discussion about those two ideas and their intersection. Will city people need to grow their own food in the future? Can the internet be used effectively to deliver training in the essential garden skills and design principles? If you're a city person, what kind of online resources do you think would help you? If you're a gardening guru, how could you best capture and share what you have learned?
Thursday 13 March 2008
Wednesday 12 March 2008
Tuesday 11 March 2008
Queenslanders receive cash incentive to tackle climate change
Update 13/4: Most of what I wrote in this post still makes sense, except that the actual model proposed by the government is slightly different to what I though it was. See today's post for more detail.
---
Great headline, huh? I can't claim credit for it - somebody in the Premier's Office came up with that one to catch the media's attention for today's press release about feed-in tariffs for private solar electricity generation. (Thanks to Ian for pointing that one out to me.)
Like most government statements there's enough spin there to make you dizzy just looking at it. The goods news is that behind the bluster is some really good policy. And a catch, of course.
The announcement lauds the Queensland government's decision to "pay households and business 44 cents for every kilowatt-hour generated from solar power systems at work and at home and fed into the grid." At first glance it sounds like every panel on every roof suddenly becomes a great money-spinner. However you need to read carefully into the definition of "fed into the grid." In the context of the rest of the release it becomes clear that the 44c rate applies only to any additional energy produced by the panels in excess of the energy consumed by the household or business. Your panels have to make more energy than you use before the government (or utilities) spend a cent.
You'd know by now that I'm quite proud of my home's energy efficiency. Our bill just arrived confirming our consumption for the quarter at 7.8kWh per day. (By comparison, Australian government figures I found via Google seem to suggest that the average Aussie household uses around 18, and some friends of ours just got hit with a bill for something in the vicinity of 50kWh per day.) To produce enough energy to meet all of my own needs in a year, I would need to install a 2kW (peak output) array which is estimated to produce almost exactly 8kWh per day on average. Even with the discount negotiated by the Local Power buying group and the federal govt's eight grand rebate I'd be looking at an investment of around $11,000 just to get my quarterly bill down to zero!
If I wanted to actually get some of the 44c/kWh action I'd need to install an even larger 3kW array - an additional investment of 7 thousand for a yearly return of around $650. Premier Bligh's offer doesn't sound quite so generous now, does it?
So I need to explain why I said at the top of this that it's "really good policy". Thankfully the explanation is simple: this policy promotes interest and investment in renewable energy infrastructure, but more importantly it provides a strong incentive to increase efficiency and reduce demand in order to get household or business consumption down below the capacity of smaller PV systems which are presently affordable thanks to the federal government's $8K rebate scheme. For myself, I'll be taking the 4kWh per day threshold as a personal challenge.
Though I may have to wait until the kids leave home before that becomes feasible. Good thing the feed-in tariff legislation announced today is guaranteed for 20 years.
---
Great headline, huh? I can't claim credit for it - somebody in the Premier's Office came up with that one to catch the media's attention for today's press release about feed-in tariffs for private solar electricity generation. (Thanks to Ian for pointing that one out to me.)
Like most government statements there's enough spin there to make you dizzy just looking at it. The goods news is that behind the bluster is some really good policy. And a catch, of course.
The announcement lauds the Queensland government's decision to "pay households and business 44 cents for every kilowatt-hour generated from solar power systems at work and at home and fed into the grid." At first glance it sounds like every panel on every roof suddenly becomes a great money-spinner. However you need to read carefully into the definition of "fed into the grid." In the context of the rest of the release it becomes clear that the 44c rate applies only to any additional energy produced by the panels in excess of the energy consumed by the household or business. Your panels have to make more energy than you use before the government (or utilities) spend a cent.
You'd know by now that I'm quite proud of my home's energy efficiency. Our bill just arrived confirming our consumption for the quarter at 7.8kWh per day. (By comparison, Australian government figures I found via Google seem to suggest that the average Aussie household uses around 18, and some friends of ours just got hit with a bill for something in the vicinity of 50kWh per day.) To produce enough energy to meet all of my own needs in a year, I would need to install a 2kW (peak output) array which is estimated to produce almost exactly 8kWh per day on average. Even with the discount negotiated by the Local Power buying group and the federal govt's eight grand rebate I'd be looking at an investment of around $11,000 just to get my quarterly bill down to zero!
If I wanted to actually get some of the 44c/kWh action I'd need to install an even larger 3kW array - an additional investment of 7 thousand for a yearly return of around $650. Premier Bligh's offer doesn't sound quite so generous now, does it?
So I need to explain why I said at the top of this that it's "really good policy". Thankfully the explanation is simple: this policy promotes interest and investment in renewable energy infrastructure, but more importantly it provides a strong incentive to increase efficiency and reduce demand in order to get household or business consumption down below the capacity of smaller PV systems which are presently affordable thanks to the federal government's $8K rebate scheme. For myself, I'll be taking the 4kWh per day threshold as a personal challenge.
Though I may have to wait until the kids leave home before that becomes feasible. Good thing the feed-in tariff legislation announced today is guaranteed for 20 years.
Sunday 9 March 2008
Can't have your solar power cake and eat it too
Let me first give kudos to the people behind Local Power, a community-based buying group which is helping to bring a chunk of new solar electricity generation online. I applaud their initiative, commitment and professionalism. More than that, though, I've paid them a deposit to have a 1kW photovoltaic array installed on my own roof.
Curiously, following on the heels of the high levels of public interest in what this group has done, the Queensland government has announced that it will offer a similar kind of service in order to facilitate the installation of a thousand PV systems on roofs in the "sunshine state" at a reduced price. Note they're not actually providing funds for the gear - just the administrative service that's required to coordinate a bulk purchase and therefore a cheaper per-unit price.
I'll leave my thoughts about the significance and value of PV in the grand scheme of things for another post. For this one I want to focus on a tricky little aspect which green-minded solar panel buyers will need to be aware of. (The particulars are likely to vary in different situations but what I'm writing here is what I understand will apply to me. I'll edit and/or post again if I need to.)
Both the Local Power and Qld government schemes are for "grid-connected" solar photovoltaic electricity generating systems. The systems include an inverter which takes the low-voltage DC power from the panels and transforms it into 240V AC power that gets fed into the electricity grid. There's a dedicated meter which measures how much power your system has supplied to the grid, separate from the one you already have which measures how much power you consume in the running of your home.
Hypothetically, let's say that in some future 3 month period my home consumes 675kWh of energy and my panels supply 360kWh to the grid. As I understand it, when I get my electric utility bill I will see the readings for both meters. Normally Tariff 1 costs about 15.5c per kWh so without the panels I'd be charged about $105 for my energy. But with the panels producing power I get recognition for their contribution with a simple deduction from my Tariff 11 consumption. The nett use would be 315kWh at around $49.
Woohoo! My investment in panels has not only saved me money, but reduced my dependence on fossil fuels by 360kWh this quarter! I can sure feel proud of myself now, having invested in environmental protection and sustainability.
But wait a moment. I might be badly mistaken about my green energy credentials.
You see, most of the time when a PV system like this gets installed, the buyer signs a little bit of paper in return for an extra discount on the up-front cost. The amount of the discount varies but as an example the system I've ordered might be discounted by somewhere between $315 and $819. Neat, huh? How nice of the government to give me a bit of an extra bonus for investing in clean energy.
Listen up: this is not a bonus. This is not free money. The form that you are offered to sign is one which transfers your right to claim the "cleanness" of the energy your panels will produce over their lifetime to another party. You are paid market price for your Renewable Energy Certificates, or "RECs" as they are known. One REC is equivalent to one megawatt-hour (MWh) of renewable power. These RECs represent the legal right of the holder to claim that the power they used (or sold to somebody else) was clean. And if you signed that paper, you don't have them any more.
So in the case of my hypothetical electricity bill, though I do enjoy a financial benefit, every one of the 675kWh of energy that I consumed must have been supplied to the grid by coal-fired power stations! If I wanted to have a clear conscience about my energy use I'd still have to opt in for 675kWh of 100% certified GreenPower. In effect I would have to pay a bit extra each quarter to buy a portion of my own original RECs back again.
I hope that's not too confusing. Just to repeat: by selling my RECs when the system was installed, I gave up the right to claim the cleanliness of the energy my system produces. Though I get a financial benefit for the energy produced by the system over time, I would still have to opt in to GreenPower schemes for the entire amount of my personal energy consumption if I want to eliminate my dependence on dirty power generators.
It's worth pointing out that you're in no way obliged to sell your RECs. You can either hold on to them with a view to eventually selling them (during which time you would have to pay the GreenPower surcharge since you're intending to give up your right to the cleanliness of your panels' energy sometime in the future) or your can ignore the whole scheme entirely and just consider all of that clean energy to be yours for as long as you're using the panels. Whatever you do, there's a bit of a gamble and speculation involved and most of us don't have the time nor skill to track and trade these things to our financial benefit.
So if you do sign up for one of these systems - which I would generally applaud even though I think PV is only a tiny part of the overall solution to our energy and climate crisis - please be aware of the significance of the RECs scheme and what it means to sell those certificates. Otherwise you might end up being more dependent on fossil fuels than you hoped you would be, without even realising it.
Curiously, following on the heels of the high levels of public interest in what this group has done, the Queensland government has announced that it will offer a similar kind of service in order to facilitate the installation of a thousand PV systems on roofs in the "sunshine state" at a reduced price. Note they're not actually providing funds for the gear - just the administrative service that's required to coordinate a bulk purchase and therefore a cheaper per-unit price.
I'll leave my thoughts about the significance and value of PV in the grand scheme of things for another post. For this one I want to focus on a tricky little aspect which green-minded solar panel buyers will need to be aware of. (The particulars are likely to vary in different situations but what I'm writing here is what I understand will apply to me. I'll edit and/or post again if I need to.)
Both the Local Power and Qld government schemes are for "grid-connected" solar photovoltaic electricity generating systems. The systems include an inverter which takes the low-voltage DC power from the panels and transforms it into 240V AC power that gets fed into the electricity grid. There's a dedicated meter which measures how much power your system has supplied to the grid, separate from the one you already have which measures how much power you consume in the running of your home.
Hypothetically, let's say that in some future 3 month period my home consumes 675kWh of energy and my panels supply 360kWh to the grid. As I understand it, when I get my electric utility bill I will see the readings for both meters. Normally Tariff 1 costs about 15.5c per kWh so without the panels I'd be charged about $105 for my energy. But with the panels producing power I get recognition for their contribution with a simple deduction from my Tariff 11 consumption. The nett use would be 315kWh at around $49.
Woohoo! My investment in panels has not only saved me money, but reduced my dependence on fossil fuels by 360kWh this quarter! I can sure feel proud of myself now, having invested in environmental protection and sustainability.
But wait a moment. I might be badly mistaken about my green energy credentials.
You see, most of the time when a PV system like this gets installed, the buyer signs a little bit of paper in return for an extra discount on the up-front cost. The amount of the discount varies but as an example the system I've ordered might be discounted by somewhere between $315 and $819. Neat, huh? How nice of the government to give me a bit of an extra bonus for investing in clean energy.
Listen up: this is not a bonus. This is not free money. The form that you are offered to sign is one which transfers your right to claim the "cleanness" of the energy your panels will produce over their lifetime to another party. You are paid market price for your Renewable Energy Certificates, or "RECs" as they are known. One REC is equivalent to one megawatt-hour (MWh) of renewable power. These RECs represent the legal right of the holder to claim that the power they used (or sold to somebody else) was clean. And if you signed that paper, you don't have them any more.
So in the case of my hypothetical electricity bill, though I do enjoy a financial benefit, every one of the 675kWh of energy that I consumed must have been supplied to the grid by coal-fired power stations! If I wanted to have a clear conscience about my energy use I'd still have to opt in for 675kWh of 100% certified GreenPower. In effect I would have to pay a bit extra each quarter to buy a portion of my own original RECs back again.
I hope that's not too confusing. Just to repeat: by selling my RECs when the system was installed, I gave up the right to claim the cleanliness of the energy my system produces. Though I get a financial benefit for the energy produced by the system over time, I would still have to opt in to GreenPower schemes for the entire amount of my personal energy consumption if I want to eliminate my dependence on dirty power generators.
It's worth pointing out that you're in no way obliged to sell your RECs. You can either hold on to them with a view to eventually selling them (during which time you would have to pay the GreenPower surcharge since you're intending to give up your right to the cleanliness of your panels' energy sometime in the future) or your can ignore the whole scheme entirely and just consider all of that clean energy to be yours for as long as you're using the panels. Whatever you do, there's a bit of a gamble and speculation involved and most of us don't have the time nor skill to track and trade these things to our financial benefit.
So if you do sign up for one of these systems - which I would generally applaud even though I think PV is only a tiny part of the overall solution to our energy and climate crisis - please be aware of the significance of the RECs scheme and what it means to sell those certificates. Otherwise you might end up being more dependent on fossil fuels than you hoped you would be, without even realising it.
Stats Update
For the two weeks to 4th March:
Electricity averaging 7.51kWh per day (313W continuous)
Water averaging 188L per day
Averages for the quarter since Dec 28 are 7.72kWh (322 continuous) and 165L.
Electricity averaging 7.51kWh per day (313W continuous)
Water averaging 188L per day
Averages for the quarter since Dec 28 are 7.72kWh (322 continuous) and 165L.
Starting again, though not from scratch
It was about a year ago that I first became seriously concerned about the environment and the sustainability of human civilisation. For about six months my energy and activity built up, then they plateaued and eventually waned over summer. Now here we are approaching the March equinox and I think things are on the up again. I'm totally out of phase. Maybe I should live in the northern hemisphere.
In the latter part of last year I came into a bit of extra money. It was enough to offer lots of interesting possibilities, but not so much that I didn't have to think carefully about what I'd do with it. I kept a chunk of it in reserve in case the appalling mosquito plague of the previous summer repeated itself, in which case I'd have invested in a gizmo to help make going outdoors a less hazardous proposition. But thankfully summer was mild and the mozzies were less than awful and so the funds stayed in my bank account.
Over the same period though, my gardening and composting efforts pretty much stopped. I got the overflow from the south tank connected up to the street, and I ripped up four old sleepers and a previous owner's intricate irrigation system in preparation for a backyard renovation... but that was about it. The compost pile has had no turning or tending. And yesterday I found that my mulch heap has become home for cane toads and termites! That's going to be a challenge to sort out. But anyway...
Pragmatically speaking, living in a city and having a sporadically time-demanding job as I do, I can't guarantee regular time to devote to gardening during the week. So I need to be smart about the way I set things up and to make use of systems and solutions which don't require a lot of maintenance.
Realising this, I've finally given in and used my stash of cash to purchase a fancy compost bin to take over duty from the simple open-bottomed thin-walled mouse-eaten black plastic box I've been using up until now. I put it on a base of four large pavers sited nearer the back door so hopefully it'll be less inviting and accessible to the furry little bastards, and adding things to it in the evenings should be less of an, um, "adventure".
I have to say, though, that as I set about giving my new bin a good feed of starting materials I was rather impressed with the quality of the compost in the bottom of the old black bin. It was made from a huge pile of woody weeds, a large dose of hedge trimmings and half a dozen or so 4-litre buckets of already-putrefying kitchen scraps irregularly thrown in on top. After removing some of the sticks and stalks and chunks of onion, what I was left with pretty much fit the descriptions of good compost that you read in books: dark brown, spongy, slightly moist, little odour. About ten centimetres of that has gone in to the bottom of the new bin to hopefully give the thing a good kick-start.
And along with that I'm hoping to restart my gardening efforts. In the past year or so I've failed to grow heaps of things, but I've learned a fair bit along the way and am ready to have another go. In truth it's a little out of character for me to show that kind of long-term persistence. Sadly, though, the signs are increasingly suggesting that a backyard garden is going to be an invaluable asset in years to come.
In the latter part of last year I came into a bit of extra money. It was enough to offer lots of interesting possibilities, but not so much that I didn't have to think carefully about what I'd do with it. I kept a chunk of it in reserve in case the appalling mosquito plague of the previous summer repeated itself, in which case I'd have invested in a gizmo to help make going outdoors a less hazardous proposition. But thankfully summer was mild and the mozzies were less than awful and so the funds stayed in my bank account.
Over the same period though, my gardening and composting efforts pretty much stopped. I got the overflow from the south tank connected up to the street, and I ripped up four old sleepers and a previous owner's intricate irrigation system in preparation for a backyard renovation... but that was about it. The compost pile has had no turning or tending. And yesterday I found that my mulch heap has become home for cane toads and termites! That's going to be a challenge to sort out. But anyway...
Pragmatically speaking, living in a city and having a sporadically time-demanding job as I do, I can't guarantee regular time to devote to gardening during the week. So I need to be smart about the way I set things up and to make use of systems and solutions which don't require a lot of maintenance.
Realising this, I've finally given in and used my stash of cash to purchase a fancy compost bin to take over duty from the simple open-bottomed thin-walled mouse-eaten black plastic box I've been using up until now. I put it on a base of four large pavers sited nearer the back door so hopefully it'll be less inviting and accessible to the furry little bastards, and adding things to it in the evenings should be less of an, um, "adventure".
I have to say, though, that as I set about giving my new bin a good feed of starting materials I was rather impressed with the quality of the compost in the bottom of the old black bin. It was made from a huge pile of woody weeds, a large dose of hedge trimmings and half a dozen or so 4-litre buckets of already-putrefying kitchen scraps irregularly thrown in on top. After removing some of the sticks and stalks and chunks of onion, what I was left with pretty much fit the descriptions of good compost that you read in books: dark brown, spongy, slightly moist, little odour. About ten centimetres of that has gone in to the bottom of the new bin to hopefully give the thing a good kick-start.
And along with that I'm hoping to restart my gardening efforts. In the past year or so I've failed to grow heaps of things, but I've learned a fair bit along the way and am ready to have another go. In truth it's a little out of character for me to show that kind of long-term persistence. Sadly, though, the signs are increasingly suggesting that a backyard garden is going to be an invaluable asset in years to come.
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