This is true - without Chinese manufacturing of solar cells and panels, solar energy would not be as cheap as it is today.
Equally true is that Chinese manufacturing of solar cells is only partly possible because of Australian solar research and development. In 1983, a research team at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), invented the PERC silicon solar cell. This design fundamentally improved solar cell efficiency to capture sunlight more effectively and reduce electronic losses. Over several decades of refinement, the UNSW team continued to set global efficiency records, pushing cell efficiency from 18% in 1984 up to 25% by the early 2000s.
Yes - the regulated offer is capped at 24 kWh per day but some retailers such as Globird and CovaU are offering plans which include up to 50 kWh per day of ‘free’ electricity. With a large enough battery and inverter you could just end up paying daily supply charges of $1.65-2.20 per day.
I think the likely cost would have been hundreds of billions considering Australia does not have a nuclear energy generation industry. It currently has a very small nuclear workforce as it only has a small nuclear medical reactor on the outskirts of Sydney.
This article is misleading as it implies that Australian energy retailers must provide every household with 3 hours of free electricity.
This is not the case. From 1 July 2026, Australian energy retailers with more than 1,000 customers must offer at least one energy plan which includes 3 hours of free electricity, capped at 24kWh per day, to residential customers in 3 states - NSW, SE Queensland and South Australia.
https://www.energy.gov.au/rebates/solar-sharer-offer
Not all energy plans that the retailers offer have to include 3 hours of free electricity. In practice, most energy plans currently offered don’t include 3 hours of free electricity but some retailers such as Globird are offering more than one energy plan which includes ‘free’ electricity.
The downside of these solar sharer plans which include ‘free’ electricity is that they generally have higher daily supply charges and higher usage charges outside the ‘free’ window to recoup the costs of the ‘free’ electricity.
Australian consumers can choose the retailer and energy plan their home or business is on and can change their plan at any time.
This seems like a very complicated way to maintain a menu on a static website. Have you considered using old school server side includes? It’s what they were designed for.
Nice work! This is very impressive and you’ve shown real resilience and perseverance to work through the challenges you encountered while building this.
The author of this article appears to be unaware that very high electricity prices have been the other key driver behind Pakistan’s solar boom along with the massive reduction in the cost of solar panels.
I am not a lawyer but this CDC order seems contrary to Trump’s recent Executive Order “RESTORING FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND ENDING FEDERAL CENSORSHIP”.
This Executive Order states in part: “Government censorship of speech is intolerable in a free society.
…
Sec. 2. Policy. It is the policy of the United States to: (a) secure the right of the American people to engage in constitutionally protected speech;
(b) ensure that no Federal Government officer, employee, or agent engages in or facilitates any conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen;
…
Sec. 3. Ending Censorship of Protected Speech.
(a) No Federal department, agency, entity, officer, employee, or agent may act or use any Federal resources in a manner contrary to section 2 of this order.”
Is Autotab able to scrape data from multiple websites with different structures and combine this data into structured data in one CSV or JSON file? Example: scrape interest rates offered on savings accounts from multiple bank websites and extract the name of the bank, bank logo, product name and interest rate for each account and run this saved query on a regular schedule (daily, weekly etc)?
Is Skyvern able to scrape data from multiple websites with different structures and combine this data into structured data in one CSV or JSON file? Example: scrape interest rates offered on savings accounts from multiple bank websites and extract the name of the bank, bank logo, product name and interest rate for each account and run this saved query on a regular schedule (daily, weekly etc)?
The article makes it clear that sales of EVs in the US are still increasing but the rate of increase has slowed.
It says “…sales of EVs keep going up — a record 300,000 cars sold in the US in the third quarter of 2023 were electric — but the pace of adoption has markedly slowed”.
@dang - This headline should be changed to the article headline “What happened to EVs?”
Asbestos has affected all sorts or people, not just in the Navy. A close relative of mine who was a plumber has been diagnosed with it and it is an awful disease.
Equally true is that Chinese manufacturing of solar cells is only partly possible because of Australian solar research and development. In 1983, a research team at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), invented the PERC silicon solar cell. This design fundamentally improved solar cell efficiency to capture sunlight more effectively and reduce electronic losses. Over several decades of refinement, the UNSW team continued to set global efficiency records, pushing cell efficiency from 18% in 1984 up to 25% by the early 2000s.
Today, PERC technology is the cheapest way to generate electricity using solar cells and is utilised in over 90% of solar panels manufactured globally. https://theconversation.com/how-an-aussie-invention-could-so...
The solar research group at UNSW trained over 120 PhD students who went on to establish solar manufacturing, particularly in China.