Sustainable House Day – Sept 9
Here’s a great opportunity to have a tour of one of the Illawarra’s most sustainable homes – the Rowes’ residence in Shellharbour.
Free Firewood
You can save a lot of money by heating your home with wood, especially if you can get the wood for free. Here’s where I get mine – where do you get yours?
Mitsubishi i-MiEV Electric Car Thoughts
My thoughts on Australia’s first mass-produced all-electric car. Is this the start of something big?
NSW Government Revamps Solar Feed In Tariff Scheme
Effective midnight tonight, the NSW Government has announced a revamping of the Solar Bonus Scheme – the gross feed-in tariff for solar electricity has been reduced from 60c per kWh to 20c per kWh.
Shellharbour Solar Expo A Huge Success
I spent most of Sunday helping to staff the Jamberoo FutureCare table at the Shellharbour Solar Expo, at Shellharbour Workers’ Club (who actually have 22 kW of solar panels installed themselves – see photo). The expo was organised by Jamberoo FutureCare, in conjunction with Shellharbour and Kiama Councils. There were a number of solar power … [Read more…]
The CSIRO Home Energy Saving Handbook
I was interviewed on Monday by a researcher from the University of Wollongong about my experiences with installing solar hot water at our old house. They’re looking into why people choose solar, how they choose the system and supplier, what their experience has been, etc. Sitting in on the interview was an interesting guy from … [Read more…]
Residential Solar Power: Is The Income Taxable?
There has been a bit of a storm in a teacup lately in the Australian press, claiming that all those people who “bought into the hype” and installed solar panels on their homes will now have to pay tax on the income they receive for any electricity generated. Of course it’s very easy for the … [Read more…]
My Chest Fridge Conversion
I finally got the chance to set up my chest freezer as a fridge a couple of weeks ago, and I’ve been testing it out so I could write up this post. You may recall I mentioned that we had an old fridge/freezer running in our garage as a second fridge. With three young kids … [Read more…]
Gross Solar Feed In Tariff Petition For Australia
The Australian government is waffling on the issue of a nationalised renewable energy feed-in tariff for homes. Recent announcements seem to indicate that they’ll favour a net tariff, which is very much inferior to the gross feed-in tariff the solar industry is calling for. A gross feed-in tariff (where the energy-producing household is paid for … [Read more…]
Guerrilla Solar
I just read an interesting article in [ReNew Magazine Issue 104](http://shop.ata.org.au/cart.php?target=product&product_id=16521&category_id=300) about the [guerrilla solar movement](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Guerrilla) and one individual’s experiments with his unapproved DIY grid-connect solar panels. It’s not as dangerous as it sounds. Solar guerrillas use commercial mains power inverters which meet the relevant international standards to feed their electricity into the grid. You … [Read more…]