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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 the heat and during the evening peak period, when it was still around 40 in many locations, we had little or no contribution from solar PV. For many people – such as the young, the sick and the elderly – controlling the temperature is not a matter of comfort but of life and death. Such is the state of our electricity system that New South Wales was perilously close to having to introduce rolling blackouts. As it is, the grid’s integrity was only maintained through reducing the energy supplied to the Tomago aluminium smelter which consumes over 10% of the state’s electricity. The production of Aluminium metal, more than any other process, relies on a constant supply of electricity. Cutting the power to Tomago puts at risk economic output and workers’ jobs and raises the dreaded spectre of the “frozen potline”. Such an occurrence, when an interruption in the electricity supply causes the liquid aluminium in the cells to solidify – is a major industrial disaster requiring the solidified metal to be jackhammered out and causing major damage to the production equipment with the repair bill in the tens of millions. This is not just a theoretical risk – it happened at Alcoa’s Portland smelter in Victoria last year. So, our electricity grid, one of the core pieces of infrastructure for our modern society, has become inadequate. This is threatening our industry, our pocketbooks and ultimately people’s lives. That isn’t acceptable. Many commentators say that the lack of clear long term policy in the sector has hampered investment in new energy sources. The energy industry has called for a degree of consensus so that some non-partisan guidelines can be developed. Unfortunately at present that seems too be much to ask our politicians. This article is not about the idealogical battle between coal fired energy and renewables. It is about what we can do right now to address the problem. Firstly, we need to realise that, even if political consensus were reached tomorrow, the energy shortage is going to take several years to rectify: if we go with new investment in coal fired power stations they will take perhaps five years to be designed, approved, built and commissioned; if we concentrate on renewables then we must await advances in battery technology – there are some questions around whether Lithium Ion is the right technology for grid scale storage but, even if it is up to the task, a sufficient volume of affordable large scale storage will take time to be acquired and deployed. So, whichever way we go, it looks like it will be five years or more before we have sufficient energy to meet our peak needs. Continued indecision about which technologies to pursue will only lengthen that period. What do we do in the meantime? Sit in the dark and heat twiddling our thumbs every time we have a heatwave? Each time the grid fails we face more risk to property and lives. The team at Nulux believes strongly that not nearly enough attention has been paid to the potential for reduction in consumption through increases in energy efficiency. A kilowatt hour saved is the equivalent of a kilowatt hour generated. Nulux believes this is the only feasible near term solution to our dilemma. We have therefore been searching globally for the best available technologies to increase the efficiency of electrical plant and equipment. These complement the measures already available to us including upgrading the energy efficiency of plant, lighting and air conditioning systems by providing plug and play solutions to increase the efficiency of your existing equipment. The energy efficiency technologies which Nulux has introduced to Australia and is offering as solutions are quick to install and can have an immediate impact on energy consumption: ComEC – Nulux’s commercial energy controller – can deliver 10-20% energy (kWh) savings to general commercial premises; our new HS100 HomEC home energy controller can save 10-15% of household energy consumption; our LEC Lighting Energy Controller can save 20-43% of energy consumed on lighting without changing your lighting infrastructure; our SinuMEC motor controller can reduce the energy consumed by electric motors which run at constant speed under varying load (including escalators, travelators and conveyors) by 20-25% These energy saving solutions are robust, tested and deliver a strong return on investment – typically 20% to 50% per annum. In New South Wales, where incentives are available for these technologies under the Energy Saving Scheme (ESS), investment returns can be even greater. Victoria is set to introduce similar eligibility criteria for its Victorian Energy Efficiency Target (VEET) scheme. As a society we have some serious decisions to be made about the focus of investment in our energy generating capacity. While we are doing that, at least let’s keep the lights on! take care, Tony Ferguson

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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, because we have the means to destroy our world but not to escape it Hawking makes the point that the internet, and the platforms it makes possible, create the opportunity for a few people to create enormous wealth while employing very few people. As Hawking says “This is inevitable, it is progress, but it is also socially destructive.” Put this alongside the social and economic damage caused by the GFC (which we underestimate from our Australian perspective because we were largely spared its impact) and it is clear why so many people around the world have had enough. The automation of factories has already decimated jobs in traditional manufacturing, and the rise of artificial intelligence is likely to extend this job destruction deep into the middle classes, with only the most caring, creative or supervisory roles remaining. In the face of this, the solutions put forward by the populists – nationalism, isolationism and turning back the clock – are perhaps understandable but frankly counterproductive. In the face of an existential threat humanity needs to pull together, not fragment. Just one example of why isolationism is the wrong approach to increasing inequality is the need for a global approach to imposing a fair tax burden on the world’s billionaires and major corporations. Wealth derived from the tech sector is largely borderless. The developer of a wildly successful piece of software can equally sit in California, Sydney or the Bahamas to reap the benefits. The problem of climate change is similarly only properly addressable through a global approach. Not a good time for our governments to be retreating within their borders! And an even worse time for political leaders to be spending their energies in ever more frenzied attacks on each other – defending their entrenched dogmas instead of working together to create some real solutions. How does all of this have relevance to Australia? In my experience, we Aussies have a deeply embedded egalitarianism and a highly developed sense of the “fair go”. Our location, far from the world’s major centres, has made us a worldly lot – far more so than Americans. In a world where Britain and the US are abrogating global leadership perhaps we need to take some? take care,

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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 acquiring knowledge” rationalism still ruled. I believed that globally we were a fairly rational society (with a few exceptions – fanatics pursuing various extreme causes). A rational decision making approach bases decisions upon data that have been obtained through observation or statistical analysis. It is scientific by its very nature and it leads itself to quantitative analysis and modelling to support long term decisions. I believed that propositions like the benefits to economic development of open borders and free trade, having been rationally established, would not be torn down without due analysis of the consequences. I saw technology blooming as never before and I thought that most people accepted that the benefits to humanity of this technological advancement can be maximised in an open, increasingly borderless world. Then came Brexit, followed a few months later by Trump’s victory, and I had to throw all that thinking out the window. Just what is going on here? I was talking to a friend about why this might all be happening and he recommended a book called The True Believer: Thoughts on the nature of Mass Movements by Eric Hoffer which was first published in 1951. I was frankly a bit dubious about the relevance of a 1951 book on social history to our present world but my friend knows a lot of stuff so I visited the Amazon website. Two minutes later I had a copy of the book on my Kindle (note: ain’t technology wonderful!) and dove into it. Eric Hoffer was born in the Bronx in 1893, of German parents. He lost his mother at an early age and his father not long after. The accident that killed his mother caused him to lose his eyesight from the age of 5 to 15. When his sight returned Hoffer became a voracious reader and developed himself into a self-educated social philosopher. After spending a decade on skid row, working odd jobs and prospecting for gold he began work as a longshoreman (a wharfie in Australian parlance) on the docks of San Francisco. Hoffer was influenced by his modest roots and working-class surroundings, seeing in it enormous human potential. When he was called an intellectual, he insisted that he was “a longshoreman”. Hoffer studied many successful “mass movements” which led to major changes in human society: The English Civil War, various nationalist movements, Bolshevism, Nazism, Fascism, Islam, even the early days of Christianity and of the Protestant movement. Hoffer’s key proposition is that all these successful revolutions have far more in common than they have differences. “all mass movements are interchangeable” Hoffer sees the key ingredients of any successful mass movement as: the existence of a large disaffected group of people in society to form the potential converts: Hoffer sees the “New Poor” as the most likely source of converts for mass movements as they recall their former wealth with resentment and blame others for their current misfortune. “For men to plunge headlong into an undertaking of vast change, they must be intensely discontented, yet not destitute, and they must have the feeling that by the possession of some potent doctrine, infallible leader or some new technique they have access to a source of irresistable power.” Examples include the mass evictions of relatively prosperous tenants during the English Civil War of the 1600s or the middle- and working-classes in Germany who passionately supported Hitler in the 1930s after suffering years of economic hardship. mobilisation by a charismatic leader who calls the true believers to take united action. In this call to action the self is subjugated and believers identify the most as “a member of a certain tribe or family,” whether religious, political, revolutionary, or nationalist. Hoffer identifies this tribalism as the reappearance of a “primitive state of being” common among pre-modern cultures. Mass movements also use play-acting and spectacle designed to make the individual feel overwhelmed and awed by their membership in the tribe, as with the massive ceremonial parades of the Nazis. The promotion of doctrines that elevate faith over reason and serve as “fact-proof screens between the faithful and the realities of the world.” The doctrine of a mass movement must not be questioned under any circumstances. “Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves.” Successful mass movements need not believe in a God, but they absolutely must believe in a devil. Hatred unifies the true believers, and Hoffer says “the ideal devil is a foreigner” attributed with nearly supernatural powers of evil. with the above elements in place the actual doctrine of the mass movement doesn’t much matter! Hoffer cites the oft-observed conversion of members of one mass movement into (equally fanatical) members of another as evidence for this. ” A Saul turning into Paul is neither a rarity nor a miracle.” Hoffer’s proposition – stated 65 years ago – fits way too well with my observations of the world in 2016 for me to dismiss it. Hoffer argues that the length of the most energetic phase of a mass movement, when the fanatics are in control and the ‘fact-proof screens’ are most impenetrable, can be predicted with some accuracy. Those mass movements with a specific goal (such as the American Revolution) to be shorter-lived and feature less terror and bloodshed. An amorphous goal tends to result in a longer active phase of decades rather than years and also include substantially more bloodshed (such as the Bolsheviks in Russia, Nazism in Germany). In either case, Hoffer suggests that mass movements are accompanied by a dearth of creative innovation because so much energy is devoted to the mass movement. That is particularly worrying in an age when many people believe that the creative innovation associated with technological change has been a critical force for human advancement in recent years. A first rate read, and with under 200 pages of pithy text, it is accessible as well as insightful. Hoffer says “…it always fares ill with the present when a genuine mass movement is on the march”. To be fair not every mass movements is inherently bad, certainly not if you share its doctrines. Hoffer includes the American Revolution and the establishment of Christianity in his examples of mass movements which succeeded in effecting major change. And what about the central question that is being begged here? If we have a Hoffer-type “mass movement” happening in 2016 what can those of us who don’t share its doctrines do about it? My own view is that those of us who believe in rationalism and the traditions of liberal democracy need to stand up and be counted. Unfortunately, Hoffer tells us that rationalism does not always play well against fanaticism so that alone may not be enough. Certainly Hoffer’s insights (among others, he compares the plight of European Jews in WW2 to those in Palestine after the war) teach us not to sit back and ignore what is happening but to fight for our own beliefs and causes. I fear we are going to be ‘living in interesting times’. take care,

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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 muddle through, bouncing from crisis to crisis. In the long run there is no doubt at all about where we are heading… The French mathematician Lazare Carnot proposed in his 1803 paper that in any machine the accelerations and shocks of the moving parts represent losses of moment of activity. That is to say, in any natural process there exists an inherent tendency towards chaos. Entropy, expressed in mathematical terms above, is a thermodynamic quantity representing the unavailability of a system’s thermal energy for conversion into mechanical work, often interpreted as the degree of disorder or randomness in the system. the second law of thermodynamics says that entropy always increases with time In other words the second law of thermodynamics says that the universe is becoming more random. Heat death is the ultimate fate of the universe in which it has diminished to a state of no free energy and therefore can no longer sustain processes that increase entropy (including life). Some of us are inspired by the concept of ‘battling entropy’ to delay the heat death of the universe. Others can’t seem to appreciate the satisfaction in working on a task whose objective is to delay a catastrophe which is at least a googol (ie 10,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000) years away, and I guess I can understand that. After all, some of us aren’t fully convinced that we need to take action to avoid the 2 degrees C “tipping point” resulting from CO2 driven climate change which scientists tell us is likely to be less than 30 years away. So, this is a blog about things which I perceive may drive us closer to, or further away from, that ultimate chaos. While the long run outcome may be in no doubt, whether that occurs in a googol years, a million years, 30 years or six months is surely of interest. So, what factors are most likely to influence that time frame? our human nature societal developments global politics preservation or destruction of our environment technological advances In the last few decades, technology has developed to impact just about every area of our everyday lives. I believe that the mainstream media and most of the population are grossly underestimating the changes in the world that will be wrought by technology in the next few decades. I hope to provide enough examples in future Battling Entropy articles for you to form this conclusion yourself. At the centre of this new technology is the internet. A recent Reddit post asked “If someone from the 1950s suddenly appeared today, what would be the most difficult thing to explain to them about today?” The best response… I possess a device, in my pocket, that is capable of accessing the entirety of information known to man. I use it to look at pictures of cats and get in to arguments with strangers. I guess the key points to be drawn from the viral popularity of that Reddit post are that technology is advancing at a rate unparalleled in human history but that human nature is evolving far more slowly, if at all. I am a real fan of science fiction for that reason. While some literary purists may detest science fiction for depicting situations which can’t exist, I love it for exploring the impact of those impossible situations on human behaviour. And, who is to say what may be “impossible”? Reading good science fiction limbers up our mind for coping with the near future. Therefore as well as commentaries drawn from news, political developments, the environment and technology Battling Entropy contains reviews of books, typically science fiction and sociology, that I consider relevant. take care, Tony Ferguson

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Something significant is happening in Australian energy infrastructure, and most people outside the industry haven't noticed. Grid-scale battery storage is no longer a pilot project or a proof of concept. It's becoming the backbone of the grid's transition — and the investment pipeline is enormous. In the past 18 months, over 10 GWh of large-format battery projects have reached financial close or begun construction across the NEM. These aren't small demonstration units. The Victorian Big Battery (300 MW / 450 MWh), Waratah Super Battery in NSW (850 MW / 1,680 MWh), and the recently announced Collie Battery in WA (500 MW / 2,000 MWh) are utility-scale assets that will reshape how the grid operates. The economics have shifted decisively. Lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cell prices dropped below US$60/kWh in late 2023, down from over US$150/kWh just five years ago. At these prices, a 4-hour battery system can deliver firmed energy at under $80/MWh — competitive with gas peaking plants and, critically, without the fuel cost volatility. Why does this matter? Because storage solves the fundamental problem that has dogged renewable energy for years: intermittency. Solar generates when the sun shines. Wind generates when the wind blows. But demand peaks at 6pm on a winter evening, when neither is producing much. Batteries bridge that gap — absorbing cheap midday solar and dispatching it into the evening peak. The revenue model for grid batteries is multi-layered. Operators earn from energy arbitrage (buy low, sell high), FCAS (frequency control ancillary services), and increasingly from capacity contracts under the new Capacity Investment Scheme. Some projects are also securing network support agreements with transmission companies, getting paid to defer expensive grid upgrades. AEMO's 2024 Integrated System Plan calls for 15 GW / 61 GWh of dispatchable storage by 2050 in the Step Change scenario. That's roughly $30–40 billion of investment in batteries and pumped hydro alone. To put that in perspective, it's comparable to the NBN in scale — except this time, the economics actually work. But there are challenges. Supply chain concentration is a real risk — over 80% of LFP cells come from Chinese manufacturers. Grid connection queues are stretching past three years in some regions. And the workforce needed to build, install, and maintain these systems doesn't fully exist yet. The policy environment is catching up. The federal Capacity Investment Scheme has underwritten 9 GW of new capacity, much of it storage. State governments are adding their own incentives. And AEMO is redesigning market rules to properly value flexibility — which is what storage provides. For investors, the opportunity is clear. Grid-scale storage is infrastructure with contracted revenue, declining technology costs, and structural demand growth. It sits at the intersection of energy transition, grid reliability, and decarbonisation policy. The risk-return profile looks better than most infrastructure classes right now. The companies that move fastest — securing sites, locking in supply agreements, and navigating the connection process — will capture the bulk of the value. The rest will be building into a more crowded market by the end of the decade. Australia is building a new energy system in real time. Storage is the piece that makes it all work.

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In recent days nuclear power has emerged as a political lightning rod in the Australian energy debate. One side says it's the only reliable pathway to net zero. The other side says it's a stranded-asset trap. Both sides are talking past the real question — which is not whether nuclear works in the abstract, but whether it works in this market, at this cost, against these alternatives. Australia's National Electricity Market is a wholesale spot market. Generators bid into a dispatch engine every five minutes. The cheapest generation clears first. Over the past decade, the marginal cost of wind and solar has collapsed to the point where they routinely set the price at or near zero during daylight hours. Any new entrant — nuclear included — has to compete in that environment. The problem for nuclear is economic, not technical. A large-scale reactor (say 1,100 MW) has a levelised cost of energy (LCOE) somewhere between $100 and $180/MWh depending on whose numbers you trust. Even the most optimistic SMR projections sit around $90–$120/MWh. Meanwhile, utility-scale solar PPAs in Australia are being signed below $40/MWh, and wind below $50/MWh. Add four hours of lithium-ion storage and you're still under $80/MWh for a firm, dispatchable package. This isn't ideology. It's arithmetic. The counterargument is that renewables plus storage can't provide 24/7 baseload. That's true in a narrow sense — but the NEM doesn't need "baseload" in the way it did in 2005. What it needs is dispatchable capacity that can flex around variable generation. Gas peakers do that today. Batteries are starting to. Pumped hydro (see: Snowy 2.0, Borumba) will do it at scale. Nuclear, by contrast, is optimised for constant output. It doesn't ramp well. It doesn't respond to five-minute price signals. And it takes 10–15 years to build, which means the first Australian reactor wouldn't come online until the mid-2030s at the earliest — by which time the grid will already look radically different. There's another dimension that gets less attention: market structure. The NEM is moving toward a world of distributed energy resources — rooftop solar, home batteries, EVs feeding back into the grid. AEMO's Integrated System Plan projects that DER will supply up to 22% of total generation by 2050. This isn't a centralised grid anymore. Adding a 1 GW nuclear plant to a system that's decentralising is like building a new mainframe when the world is moving to cloud. None of this means nuclear is useless everywhere. France runs on it. South Korea exports it. But those countries made their nuclear bets decades ago, when capital was cheaper, construction timelines were shorter, and alternatives were more expensive. Australia is making its choice in 2024, with 2024 costs and 2024 alternatives. The real risk isn't that nuclear "doesn't work." It's that it arrives too late, costs too much, and locks in capital that could have been deployed faster elsewhere. In a market that clears on marginal cost, slow and expensive is a losing hand. If you want to decarbonise the Australian grid, the fastest and cheapest path is the one we're already on: wind, solar, storage, and transmission. You can argue about the mix. You can argue about the pace. But arguing for nuclear as a primary strategy in the NEM is arguing against the market itself. And the market, eventually, always wins.

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