Month: March 2017

Climate Change and the Victorian Bushfire Threat

Posted on by Linda

 

Climate change is increasing the risk of bushfires in Victoria and lengthening fire seasons.

  • Extreme fire weather has increased since the 1970s in the east and south of Australia, including Victoria, with the fire season length extending from October to March.
  • Climate change is now making hot days hotter, and heatwaves longer and more frequent. Drought conditions have been increasing in Australia’s southeast.
  • Climate change is driving an increase in dangerous fire weather, which in turn is increasing the frequency and severity of bushfires.

 

Continue reading “Climate Change and the Victorian Bushfire Threat” →

GridEdge and Earthworker meet with Peter Khalil

Posted on by Linda

 

Recently John and Linda, along with several Earthworker members visited ALP member for Wills, Peter Khalil to discuss how he could offer support to Earthworker Co-operative in setting up their worker owned factory in Morwell.

Peter was excited about supporting a factory space in Wills/Moreland for Warehousing initially, then Recycling down the track. Continue reading “GridEdge and Earthworker meet with Peter Khalil” →

Aquion declares bankruptcy

Posted on by Linda

Aquion, the Advanced Battery Startup Funded by Bill Gates and Kleiner Perkins, declares Bankruptcy.Aquion-declares-bankruptcy

Aquion’s saltwater battery was a safe fully recyclable energy storage battery that unfortunately was not able to live up to the expected results in the field that it was able to achieve in the factory testing.

https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Aquion-the-Bill-Gates-and-Kleiner-Perkins-Funded-Advanced-Battery-Startup>

This leaves the SoNick or Sodium Nickel Chloride batteries as the only safe fully recyclable energy storage battery currently available. SoNick batteries have been in production since 2003 and are already being used in many commercial applications and usage figures are coming from real life results rather than hoped for results from laboratory conditions. FIAMM as a company have been in operation since 1942 so are already a well-established company. Continue reading “Aquion declares bankruptcy” →

Voters say yes to renewables

Posted on by Linda

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A recent poll found that almost two out of three people agree that more renewable energy is the solution to future energy needs, and a similar amount approve of Labor’s 50 per cent renewable energy target. In other significant findings 71 per cent think the Federal Government is not doing enough to ensure affordable, reliable and clean energy for households and businesses and 45 per cent blame blackouts on failures of the energy market during extreme weather.

Key findings of the Essential Research survey of 1006 respondents conducted online from February 16 to 19:

Climate change: 60% (up 6% since December) agree that climate change is happening and is caused by human activity and 25% (down 2%) believe that we may just be witnessing a normal fluctuation in the earth’s climate. By age groups, those aged under 35 split 70%/15% and those aged 55+ split 47%/40%. People with higher education were more likely to think climate change is happening and is caused by human activity – those with university degrees split 72%/19%. Continue reading “Voters say yes to renewables” →

Quoting for Storage and PV installations

Posted on by Linda

We often get enquiries about our sodium nickel chloride battery with invertor and all wiring and configuration in our plug and play Quantum Quantum-plug and play battery unitunit. It is the ideal battery for anyone looking for energy independence as it is much more reliable than many of the other current battery technologies available.  The SoNick battery does not have any toxic materials, either in its production or use. It does not have any of the safety concerns inherent in many other batteries as it is a sodium and nickel based battery which are both non-toxic, non-flammable and abundantly available. There is no possibility of thermal runaway with the SoNick battery due to its components being basically molten salt. This is particularly important in any areas that may be prone to bushfire risk.

 

We have several brochures that have some information about the sodium nickel chloride battery and the Quantum plug and play unit as well as a document showing some of the safety tests that have been performed on the battery. These are available in the download section from our website at http://quantum.gridedge.com.au. Continue reading “Quoting for Storage and PV installations” →