I am not sure you could come up with a worse put down of the Liberal front bench than James Paterson saying "Angus is the smartest policy brain in the shadow cabinet” live.thepoint.com.au

Absolutely huge crowd in Melbourne right now. People from all backgrounds, ages and professions - united in opposition to genocide and war. This is what social cohesion looks like.

Only six months late but I really enjoyed this preso from @dylanjmcconnell.bsky.social touching on one of my favourite niche energy topics: diesel! Pipeline gas has real challenges meeting seasonal peaking needs - big tanks of liquid fuel are a great complement www.ceem.unsw.edu.au/sites/defaul...

I am absolutely not kidding

He’s not wrong.

With the LNP vote hitting 18%, it’s a good reminder of this 1988 cover

The Washington Post was consistently doing some of the best climate reporting out there in recent years. This is a huge loss (h/t @sammyroth.bsky.social) open.substack.com/pub/climatec...

Thread: Each week I run a simulation of Australia’s main electricity grid using rescaled generation data to show that it can get very close to 100% renewable electricity with 24GW/120GWh of storage (5 hrs at av demand) Results: Last week: 100.0% RE Last 232 weeks: 98.6% RE (1/5)

January was another above-average month in Australia…not a big surprise but the size of the area with average maximums for the month of 39C or higher is notable:

Underlying demand, and underlying demand ex-solar contribution (both utility and rooftop) over the last week or so ... 🔌💡

Solar provided 59% of electricity in the Australian national (east coast) grid between 9am and 6pm over the past week. It was 30% of total generation. Life moves pretty fast etc. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Every ad now

lol these actually look like ducks.. 🔌💡

In August 2021, I started running weekly simulations of Australia's main electricity grid to show that it's possible to get very close to 100% renewable supply with just enough storage to supply average demand for 5 hours. Here are learnings from 4 years of simulations: /1

.. what a difference 17 years makes. Previous peak day in Victoria - (29 Jan 2009) - virtually no wind and solar. 🔌💡

Love the concept of AI code being a "Denial-of-service attack on our human effort." (From FastAPI AI Contribution Guidelines: fastapi.tiangolo.com/contributing...)

Record breaking electricity demand in both Victoria and Sth Australia yesterday. Wind & solar performed very well, reducing residual demand by 28% & 58% respectively. 4th highest ever demand on the NEM as a whole, with wind & solar reducing residual demand by 30% Here's stats from post 2023 data

Ended up just under 300MW higher than previous peak. More interesting, is the timing - can clearing see the impact of rooftop solar - shifting the peak from 17 years ago occuring ~1:30pm, c.f. today occuring at 7pm (local time). 🔌💡

So we have a new record peak demand for Vic tonight (and still climbing!)

Record temperatures, bushfires, meh fire up those data centres that use stonks of water and require a shit tonne of electricity www.afr.com/politics/fed...

Update: currently on track for a new record demand for Victoria (at least by one measure). And as previously, actual demand still running above earlier forecasts.

Victoria has set a new all-time heat record at just under 49C, while Doiyh Australia has set its equal-fourth hottest day (and equal 10th nationally for January). Via BoM

Reminder that, as of the latest reports, Liam Ramos is still in prison in Texas - now for 5 days. His parents are legal asylum seekers with no criminal record.

Renmark in South Australia reached 49.6C and had 67km/h wind gusts.

Melbourne times

Forecast peak demand for Vic is close to a new record this evening ... actuals are currently running comfortable ahead of forecasts - if that keeps up, will certainly be a new record

Oops forgot this figure - I thought a pretty a good representation of the battery / gas dynamic.. 🔌💡

2025 certainly a big year for batteries in the NEM 🔌💡 www.afr.com/policy/energ...

HISTORIC HEAT IN AUSTRALIA Climatic history is set to be rewritten with an absolutely deadly week: Today 48.5C in South Australia,47.2 New South Wales, 45.3 Queensland,45.0 Victoria ‼️We might expect 7 CONSECUTIVE DAYS >46C in New South Wales and we can't rule out 50C. A HELL

Absolute drivel from the BBCs live feed. Despite there being abundant evidence to contradict the repulsive Noem, her words are reported uncritically, in line with the apparent belief that presenting a lie alongside the truth and calling both “narratives” has anything to do with journalism.

It is incredible STILL the level of denial in "polite company", not to mention amongst our political class, about what America now IS. Donald Trump is the most powerful leader in history and he is a fascist. That the US hasn't collapsed into total authoritarianism doesn't change the basic fact.

They actually can’t lie more than they already do and video evidence is entirely meaningless, as the past few years of atrocities filmed in Gaza have shown.

God a decade since the SA blackout this year... I feel ~old~

I wasn’t much of a Tesla fan before, but our new house came with two Tesla products pre-installed. Both of these are kinda fucked due to intentional decisions made by Tesla to screw over customers. The EV charger will only charge Tesla EVs and the Powerwall essentially cannot ever be upgraded.

"reminiscent of World War II military apparel"

.. fun times 😐

The Attorney General can’t rule out that accurately describing Israel as committing genocide could land you in jail for 15 years.

The Israeli government has committed genocide in Gaza, and its members, including Netanyahu, are war criminals.

Ok so advocating genocide is fine (exempt) under the hate speech laws but criticising the guy responsible for genocide is an offence. 👌

Cool and normal forecast for the farm this weekend ............

Seems a drastically under-reported story of the whole Trump catastrophe.

The good law, gun reform, was passed with the Coalition voting against it and Greens for it. The bad law, racial vilification, was passed with the Coalition voting for it (some Nats excepted) and Greens against it. Neat encapsulation of the social utility of each party.

“One notable MIT study found that 95 percent of companies that integrated AI saw zero meaningful growth in revenue. For coding tasks, one of AI’s most widely hyped applications, another study showed that programmers who used AI coding tools actually became slower at their jobs.”

The University of Melbourne is getting off X! (Via Faculty of Science Dean's Circular)

🔌💡New AFR piece digs into record wind + solar curtailment across the NEM — featuring analysis from CEEM’s @dylanjmcconnell.bsky.social www.afr.com/policy/energ... For more on the complexities of curtailment (it's not all bad!), see Dylan’s previous explainer: theconversation.com/should-we-wo...

... this is kind wrong / misleading - SWIS is going well, but SWIS doesn't equal WA! Lot's of offgrid, non-SWIS generation - and much of that is gas! reneweconomy.com.au/less-a-duck-...

Thread: Each week I run a simulation of Australia’s main electricity grid using rescaled generation data to show that it can get very close to 100% renewable electricity with 24GW/120GWh of storage (5 hrs at av demand) Results: Last week: 100% RE Last 229 weeks: 98.6% RE (1/5)

This is genuine Jaw-droppingly, horrifyingly real