Blog Drafts

Tesla's Texas V2G play — what happens when cars become grid assets

draft

Tesla is launching its first real vehicle-to-grid program in Texas, turning Cybertrucks into distributed energy resources. The economics and grid dynamics are more interesting than the headlines suggest.

Feb 17, 2026 at 2:14 AM

Ned's defiance becomes Akaysha's compliance

approved

Glenrowan, it seems, has moved from last stands to load-shifting — from armour against the state to storage for it. Such is life.

Feb 16, 2026 at 7:27 PM

Australia's grid-scale battery wave hits critical mass

approved

Over 14 GWh of new battery storage reached key milestones this week across Australia — from financial close to commissioning. The numbers suggest we're past the tipping point where storage is infrastructure, not experiment.

Feb 16, 2026 at 8:02 AM

The hottest place on earth runs out of energy…

approved

Take a close look at the picture above. On Saturday, Australia (and New South Wales in particular) was the hottest place on the planet. Our air conditioning systems were all running flat out to beat t...

Feb 13, 2017 at 1:00 PM

Just watched Elon Musk’s audacious and inspiring Mars colonisation announcement

draft

I have just finished watching Elon Musk’s latest SpaceX announcement and I’m absolutely, utterly blown away! At the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara Elon Musk unveiled SpaceX’s Int...

Jan 11, 2017 at 1:00 PM

Does anyone ever mourn the death of privacy?

approved

Privacy is stone dead. Let's make sure we all understand that. It died a slow and largely unlamented death over the period 1998 to 2015. To the extent anyone ever noticed its demise its murderer was s...

Jan 11, 2017 at 1:00 PM

What is entropy anyway and why would you want to battle it?

draft

What does our future hold? Are we looking at world peace and human progress (with inevitable but hopefully occasional setbacks) or are we about to descend into turmoil? Perhaps humanity will just mudd...

Jan 2, 2017 at 1:00 PM

Just returned from the Premier’s trade mission to Israel

published

Robin and I have just returned from a New South Wales Trade Mission to Israel which was led by the Premier Mike Baird. It provided some fascinating insights into the strength of the tech sector in Isr...

Jan 2, 2017 at 1:00 PM

The world is nowhere near prepared for the changes to be wrought by genetic engineering

approved

The latest animated tech video presentation from Kurzgesagt is a real cracker! See it here. Using a new tool called CRISPR, which allows scientists to cut-and-paste DNA, we can edit genes to order in...

Jan 2, 2017 at 1:00 PM

Australian renewable energy: our unfair advantage

published

While looking at the issue of renewable energy in Australia I am reminded of a great natural resource that we have in abundance. In fact we have far more of it than any other OECD country. I am talkin...

Jan 2, 2017 at 1:00 PM

The joy of discovering a new favourite sci fi author: Cixin Liu

published

I have just finished the first book of the Three Body Problem, a trilogy by Liu Cixin (刘慈欣), China’s most lauded and prolific sci fi author. The story begins at the time of the cultural revolution wh...

Jan 1, 2017 at 1:00 PM

Fact-proof screens up!

draft

Pauline Hanson has been rightly ridiculed for using a healthy section of the Great Barrier Reef, 1,000 kilometers south of where bleaching is occurring, to show that climate change is a fabrication.

Jan 1, 2017 at 1:00 PM

Critics of free trade have got it wrong

published

Until 2016 I thought that we had debated free trade vs protectionism enough over the past couple of hundred years and reached a broad consensus that free trade created value. That is, international tr...

Jan 1, 2017 at 1:00 PM

Stephen Hawking says this is the most dangerous time for our planet

published

You can see Stephen Hawking’s recent opinion piece in the Guardian here. He is talking about the social fragmentation of our world, not physical, but as he says We can’t go on ignoring inequality, b...

Jan 1, 2017 at 1:00 PM

The best explanation I have seen as to what is happening to the world in 2016 was written way back in 1951

published

Until mid 2016 I thought that I understood the world reasonably well. Three hundred odd years after the Enlightenment put forward the proposition that “reason has precedence over other ways of acquiri...

Jan 1, 2017 at 1:00 PM

BREXIT vote reflections

published

I have not had a productive day at the office! I have been sitting at work today watching the Brexit vote counting – becoming more puzzled and confused as it became obvious that the “exit” vote was go...

Jan 1, 2017 at 1:00 PM