Buy now, pay later app aims to be Afterpay for rooftop solar

Solar rooftop installations are one of the fastest-growing sectors of home improvement, with households around the country installing the equivalent of an entire power plant every four months, but not everyone can be part of the growth.

Brighte chief executive Katherine McConnell.CREDIT:

One of the main reasons households don’t install solar panels is because they believe the upfront costs are too high.

The head of the Australian Energy Market Operator, Audrey Zibelman, has warned that these upfront costs have created a growing gap between the rich and poor, because those who cannot afford solar panels are effectively paying for those who can with higher power prices.

Read the story by Cole Latimer from The Age - “Buy now, pay later app aims to be Afterpay for rooftop solar.”

See everything bad about climate change in a swingle Californian town

MONTECITO IS COMING back to life this morning. The 9,000 person town to the east of Santa Barbara has been empty since Tuesday, when mandatory evacuations forced residents out of their homes for the fifth time in four months.

Rain continues to fall on the flood-damaged area in
Montecito, CA where many residents have evacuated.

This week it was a channel of tropical moisture called the Pineapple Express, dumping bands of intense rain and triggering flash floods throughout Southern California. In January it was a once-in-a-200-year storm that dropped half an inch of water in five minutes, unleashing massive mudslides that ripped houses from their foundations and killed 27. In December it was the deadly Thomas Fire that incinerated 280,000 acres—the largest wildfire in California history.

To some, Montecito might just seem like a town hit by a string of superlatively bad luck. But to people crunching the numbers it looks less like an outlier and more like an inevitability of climate change. If you want to see what California looks like in the future, you don’t need a crystal ball. You just need to hop on the 101 and drive until you hit Montecito.

Read Megan Molteni”s Wired story - “See everything bad about climate change in a swingle Californian town.”

Dam levels across NSW continue to hold despite record dry winter

Despite a record dry winter and extremely warm daytime temperatures in New South Wales over the last four months, the state's dams are still relatively full.

One of the world's largest, Hume Dam is
still nearly full despite a record dry winter.

"It is counterintuitive, I know, but despite the long dry winter with almost four months without decent rainfall the dam storages are still very high," said Tony Webber, a spokesman for Water NSW.

"On-farm storages are being drawn down, but the big state-run dams are still holding between 80 and 90 per cent.

"From the point where dams are full, even if we have zero inflow, we still have between two and three years of water stored in our state dams.

Of the big dams, Hume Dam near Albury — one of the biggest in the world — is at 91 per cent, Wyangala is at 85 per cent, Blowering Dam is at 79 per cent, Burrendong is at 77 per cent and irrigation dam Burrinjuck at 61 per cent.

Read the ABC News story by Michael Condon - “Dam levels across NSW continue to hold despite record dry winter.”