In Search of the Perfect Investment

The is Bryon Bay,  the eastern most part of Australia:

Look carefully, you can see the Bryon Bay Lighthouse, necessary in the old days to warn ships of an approaching continent — Australia.

Once Bryon Bay ran on whale oil. It was a huge whaling port. Now it increasingly runs on solar and wind.

Five years ago, you had maybe a five year payback on solar. Now it’s under a year — at least here in Australia.

Solar panels are plummeting in price and increasing in efficiency. The new ones  don’t need the sun. They make energy when the sky is overcast. But not at night.

Tesla is the big excitement here. Not the car. But Tesla batteries. Everyone’s talking of them.

With new solar panels and new Tesla batteries, people can be confident of surviving “off the grid.”

Australians want to be off the grid. Australia is nuts on the environment. Australians are planting trees on their own properties to absorb carbon dioxide. They proudly tell you that. They shy from electricity companies that make electricity from coal, which is dirty. They speak of electric utilities as evil incarnate.

It rains torrentially in April — especially when I’m visiting. So, the Australians also buy gas generators — to stay confidently off the grid for the few times it rains.

Here’s a news story today:

Another of Australia’s major housing developers, the Melbourne-Based group Metricon, will offer rooftop solar and storage as an optional extra in a range of its new-build homes in Queensland, via a new partnership with local installer and Tesla battery reseller CSR Bradford.

CSR Bradford – whose NSW-based company started in insulation more than 80 years ago, and has since expanded into energy efficiency and solar and storage through Bradford Solar – is an accredited Tesla Powerwall reseller, and has been watching the growth of the battery storage market closely over the past few years.

For more, click here.

Allegedly, Australia has one million houses with solar already. That’s what I got told at tonight’s dinner party. The number seems high. I’m checking.

Susan and I are staying in a house that’s 100% off the grid. Yet we run lights, TVs, computers, dishwashers, washing machines, dryers and — dig this — towel warmers. That’s real spiffy. We don’t have towel warmers in our U.S. houses. We Americans are deprived.

According to leading energy site, RenewEconomy.com

Recent data shows California coming through. Recently, the state briefly generated enough solar power to meet nearly half of the state’s electricity needs, according to data from the largest grid operator in the state, California ISO.

Around midday on Friday, demand reached around 29 Gigawatts (GW), while solar was providing nearly 14 GW of generation — some 9 GW from utility-scale arrays and another 5 GW or so from rooftops and parking lot canopies around the state.

RenewEconomy.com  lists Companies involved in Automation & Renewables

• Tesla
• Google
• Apple

Government actions and reports

• Australian Federal
• Victoria (VIC)
• New South Wales (NSW)
• South Australia (SA)
• Western Australia (WA)
• ACT
• Queensland (QLD)
• Northern Territory (NT)
• United States
• United Kingdom
• China
• India

Solar

• First Solar
• Trina
• Yingli
• SunPower
• SolarCity

Battery storage

• Tesla
• Panasonic
• LG
• Redflow
• Enphase
• Sonnen

Research Groups, Institutes and Universities

• UNSW
• University of Melbourne
• University of Queensland

People

• Elon Musk
• Simon Hackett
• Tony Abbott
• Malcolm Turnbull
• Barack Obama
• Donald Trump

I had planned on going solar in our California house. But we didn’t get time. We will when we return.

Meanwhile some silly stories:

Jared Kushner Says He Read Up on Middle East During Minutes Waiting for Ski Lift

BAGHDAD (The Borowitz Report)-Jared Kushner said on Tuesday that he became “incredibly well-informed” on the Middle East by reading up on the region while waiting for the ski lift on a recent trip to Aspen.

“There would be times when you’d have to wait five or even ten minutes for the ski lift, and that’s when I’d take out my phone and read up on the Middle East,” he said. “I really got into it.”

Kushner said that the Middle East was a “truly fascinating region” because of “all the countries that they have there.”

“There is Israel, and Egypt, but there is also Yemen and places like that,” he said. “Sometimes I would start learning about a new country, but then the ski lift would come.”

Kushner said that, during a meeting on Monday in Baghdad, he “wowed” the Iraqi Prime Minister, Haider al-Abadi, with knowledge that he had gleaned about the nation while waiting for the ski lift.

“I told him that Iraq’s main agricultural products include wheat, barley, corn, and rice,” he said. “He seemed really surprised that I would know things like that.”

“Something else that’s interesting about the Middle East is there is a country called Jordan,” he added.

Kushner’s wife, Ivanka Trump, said that her husband’s ability to learn so much about the Middle East while waiting for the ski lift was “nothing short of amazing.”

“Jared is such a quick learner,” Ivanka  said. “He reminds me of Daddy.”

Global Sex Facts. At any moment:

+ 79,000,000 people are having sex.

+ 58,000,000 are kissing.

+ 37,000,000 are relaxing after having sex, and

+ One old person is reading an emailed blog about the perfect investment.

You hang in there, sunshine!

Harry Newton, where it’s the middle of the night. We’re 14 hours ahead of New York. It’s raining thee, too.

April showers, I’m told,  bring May flowers.

And Mayflowers?

Well, the bring pilgrims. assuming Donald will let them in.

I bought some overpriced Tesla.