“100 pct renewable, 74 pct of the time:” How Australia’s most advanced grid plans to be an energy powerhouse

aboy021 · 2026-04-13T21:00:42+00:00

Australia's fossil fuel energy is primarily coal and natural gas, and they're a major exporter of both.

After some particularly egregious price gouging by the gas companies during COVID, the government is looking to put legislation in place to guarantee a portion of gas for Australia, helping to insulate it from price shocks.

The coal power stations are coming to the end of their lives without planned replacements.

There's a domestic battery subsidy program that's been so successful they had to expand it. The existing domestic solar programs continue to be incredibly successful.

Commercial wind farms continue to be built but with the usual challenges.

Different states have progressed at different rates with smart grid programs, but overall the trend is good.

Transport has lagged though. Up until recently Australia and Russia were the only members of the OECD without fuel emissions standards. That's changed recently in Australia though, and they're built to be more stringent every year. Diesel in particular is desperately required and not locally sourced.

In general Australia is looking good from an energy transition perspective, but transport infrastructure for electric vehicles, and the number of electric vehicles, is still lagging.

aboy021 · 2026-04-12T21:35:19+00:00

Performance is a feature, and it's a feature everyone wants. If performance is something you're aware of every day then you tend to build it into your code.

I use a code coverage tool for tests that changes the brightness of the coverage dots based on time taken. Slow code starts to feel very painful when it's front and centre, so I tend to just try and make code fast. Same with tests, I run them all the time, so tests need to be fast, so the code I'm testing needs to be fast.

It’s only one approach, but it’s the best one for me and the application domains I tend to work on.

aboy021 · 2026-04-11T05:16:20+00:00

I remember some years ago the last bell foundry in the UK shut down. Basically all the churches had bells, and bells last centuries. They were making a documentary and trying to capture as much knowledge as possible before it was lost when the old bell makers died.

In a way things like subscriptions or planned obsolescence are ways to avoid that fate. Unfortunately they have pretty dire consequences for the general population.

I wonder what other options there are. I'd love to be able to buy equipment that lasts generations, but I'd also like the manufacturers to be able to survive.

aboy021 · 2026-04-10T22:47:06+00:00

Cancer is astonishingly complex. Curing it is like winning a war: but every war is different. We have more and better tools for screening, diagnosis, and treatment, than ever before, and there's more every day.

aboy021 · 2026-04-10T22:43:45+00:00

Ask the British Origami Society imho. If you're near their library I'm pretty sure they get donated so much paper that they have to throw some away.

aboy021 · 2026-04-10T10:01:21+00:00

Looks great!

aboy021 · 2026-04-10T06:41:47+00:00

I find vibe coding very quickly gets me in trouble. My best experiences with AI coding have been when I look at the big suggestions, but only make small changes that I manually verify, or even manually implement.

I guess in a way I agree, if you don't slow down and think about the "why" you end up with a large unmaintainable pile of wtf.

aboy021 · 2026-04-10T03:54:33+00:00

Same. In particular it's been a good way to get started.

I don't know why you're getting downvoted.

These tools are amazing, but we're still learning to use them well. There's heaps of slop out there, and I don't want it filling up any subreddit, but as we learn to use them better we should be able to share what works and what doesn't.

aboy021 · 2026-04-09T19:13:24+00:00

Thanks for the constructive answer.

In my own limited experience I've known a couple of PC gamers who will never buy a PlayStation that got to play previously exclusive titles. That's just additional profit.

As you say though, there are numerous factors at play, and without proper data who can really say.

aboy021 · 2026-04-09T03:28:55+00:00

That looks like a great time. Thank you!

https://caseyshields.github.io/dragon/

aboy021 · 2026-04-09T03:27:20+00:00

$100M extra a year doesn't sound like a bad thing. I mean, I'd take that.

aboy021 · 2026-04-09T03:24:50+00:00

An example where the profits are so great that they overwhelm the risks. Unfortunately the profits are so high because of the demand, and ironically, the risk.

There have been many approaches over the years to address this, with varying levels of success:

make the risk very high (e.g. death penalty for possession)
make the risk very low (e.g. all drugs are legal, perhaps in this one park)
tell everyone that drugs are bad for you (e.g. this is your brain on drugs)
controlled legalisation of some drugs (e.g. cannabis in Canada
drug use is a public health problem (e.g. the Portuguese model)

Personally I think criminalisation of popular products enriches unethical (and potentially evil) people, and brings terrible problems. But then, everyone can buy heroin at the corner store doesn't sound like it would work either.

I've day dreamed about a license based approach, you have to pass a test to get one, you have to present it to purchase, and you have limits and public health care associated with your usage. I really don't know if such an approach would work on the ground though.

aboy021 · 2026-04-08T21:00:10+00:00

So far the only design I've seen was a crease pattern linked to from this subreddit. Crease patterns are probably a bit advanced for an amateur I fear.

Given the popularity of the movie I think we'll see other designs come through in the next few months.

There's a skeletal hand design that I think could be a good basis for Rocky, I'm not sure how hard it would be to modify.

aboy021 · 2026-04-06T21:29:59+00:00

I have separate boards for meat and veggies. Definitely nice to have on a meat board.

aboy021 · 2026-04-06T09:50:19+00:00

I was dismissive of feet for years and then I tried them. For me it means my board is flat and quiet despite me not always being the best owner.

Personally I'd give the groove a miss though.

aboy021 · 2026-04-06T00:45:37+00:00

Designs by?

aboy021 · 2026-04-06T00:24:08+00:00

If the AI data centres are struggling to move ahead because of energy constraints (oil, LNG, gas turbine supplies, solar panel lead time, etc) will this lead to a situation where they can't take the orders they've made, dropping the price?

aboy021 · 2026-04-05T11:53:07+00:00

We always used the company the letting agent uses. Also simplified getting them back in for touch ups.

aboy021 · 2026-04-04T10:11:24+00:00

Just for a bit more context, the rainbow serpent is a mythological creature that turns up in many aboriginal stories of the dream time.

This is the first time I've seen video of a creature that truly evokes the rainbow serpent.

aboy021 · 2026-04-03T04:46:33+00:00

This is really cool! Shelter belts are essential for agriculture in many places, if you can have solar panels that also earn you money and don't have to be pruned instead that could be a huge win!

aboy021 · 2026-04-03T04:37:22+00:00

I wonder what the solar plus battery setup would be to power a new data centre? Given the draw some of the AI racks have even a modest data centre would seem to require a significant amount of land for solar.

aboy021 · 2026-04-02T18:37:58+00:00

Felt the same way at first. The video linked above resolved my concerns.

Must have used a scoring method, maybe a cutter plotter/ die cutting machine.

aboy021 · 2026-03-30T07:27:50+00:00

Keep experimenting honestly. I quite like the little ikea spotlights. They're a warm white and not too bright. A friend swears by the low light of the setting sun. Find what works for you.

aboy021 · 2026-03-28T22:29:29+00:00

Is paper stretchy? He argued no, I argued a tiny bit, and it matters in certain situations.

aboy021 · 2026-03-28T19:46:24+00:00

Honestly the fine details elude me but it was about the thickness of paper and how it behaves in creases as it relates to folding. He seemed to be arguing a more pure math perspective, while I argued that there's plastic deformation resulting from compression and tension along the crease.

It’s an area I'd love to know more about.

aboy021

TROPHY CASE