EV Ownership - Yes it's a Tesla

Look, we tend not to mention out loud too often that our EV is a Tesla Model Y. Lately it's been "a thing" to drive one of these, then yesterday The Driven posted this piece:

Can you Love the Cars and Batteries But Loathe the Man

and I thought it was time to revisit this hitherto unpublished post. Because yes. It is.

We've had the Tesla for a couple of years now and we absolutely love the thing. Don't regret for a moment buying it, do regret that Musk has fully outed himself as the dick we always kind of knew he was. We've been paying attention for many years now, and you can just about guarantee if somebody's had a really good idea in the tech space, at some stage Musk will show up and try and put his face on it. 

In the case of the Tesla we were looking for a car that met our needs, and to be frank, the Polestar another local bought, or the early BYD's that showed up all over Ballarat in our post purchase years didn't come near the requirements back then.

Reason Number 1 - we wanted an EV. We wanted a really good EV with back up and a reputation because it's got to last a long time and do a lot of kilometres in the process. The service that we've had with the Tesla has been outstanding.

Reason Number 2 - range. We live an hour out from most regional destinations, and at that time charging infrastructure was thin on the ground. We wanted to be able to head out the door with a full charge and get to Ballarat or Bendigo, Ararat, or Horsham without having to worry too much about charging. As it is we can do all of those and return without the need to charge at any point.  

Reason Number 3 - accessibility. Neither of us are young anymore and falling out of a low slung sportscar isn't on. Any sort of sedan these days can be an issue and the Model Y is a breeze to get into and out of, and get stuff into and out of. 

Reason Number 4 - carrying capacity. That distance thing. For us a shopping trip is a return loaded to the gunnels affair. We buy in bulk. Anything we buy has to be hauled home - no such thing as guaranteed delivery when you live on a major freight path in the bush. 

Reason Number 5 - tech. Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning are no fools, and their moves post that massive own goal by GM all those years ago are something we've followed closely. The BRAINS as opposed to the marketing front end at Tesla are outstanding, and frankly the tech in the thing is mind blowing. And oh so incredibly good. And improving all the time.

We don't regret the car. We regret that a country full of enough awful people opted to vote in a rapist fascist who handed the keys over to somebody like Musk, knowing full well what Musk was, does and stands for. And then continue to support him in his defenestration of decency.

We get that Tesla drivers are probably easier targets than the great mass of mindless nasty out there. After all, as the Driven article says:

Sometimes progress comes packaged with paradox, and that’s okay. 

Although the added benefit of driving around in the thing is how it spins out the RWNJ's who now have to process that "technically" they are the fanboys.

We've always said, the Model Y, the Tesla home battery system and the Starlink system we use every day are despite him, not because of him. We're not fanboys, personally have never been able to stomach him, but we have a requirement to get around, keep our power bills manageable and run a business. The Model Y met our requirements, the Powerwall's been in for years, works like a dream and was available when we wanted it. SkyMuster sucks and the Telstra link out here has been progressively downgrading. Support on all of them has been precise, quick, and incredibly helpful. No complaints.

Would we buy any of these systems again with Musk owning them? Maybe. Depends on the alternatives. He's an awful human being, but we're not dropping ourselves back into the stone age to "prove a point".

Maybe we could have a chat about people who vote for Conservative governments who downgrade local manufacturing and purposely build infrastructure that's not fit for purpose - particularly in the bush. 

Maybe we could all get started on understanding that slinging shit at people who bought a car needs to expand to include those driving Volkswagens, Tata, Audis and their various offshoots. 

We need to talk about whoever is buying IBM, Coca Cola, Kodak, Pret A Manger, Krispy Kreme and Hugo Boss products, reading Associated Press, and taking Bayer Asprin.  

Just to name a few. 

I Beg Your Pardon?

3rd February, 2025

Email To:  Jason.Heffernan@cfa.vic.gov.au

Dear Mr Heffernan

I'm a non-operational member in District 16, which you are probably aware is in the Western area of Victoria.

You'd also be aware that as of today, at the time of writing this email (approximately 1:30pm) there are:

20 Warnings, including an Emergency Warning

and

260 incidents 

You'd also be aware of the overwhelming number of call outs last night, 2nd February, due to a series of extreme and very dangerous thunderstorms that moved through sections of this half of the State. After a day of extremely high temperatures, and break outs of the two major fire complexes in the region (Gariwerd / Grampians and the Little Desert). 

So I refer you to this article:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-01-29/bushfire-western-victoria-dimboola-grampians-little-desert/104866952

Posted by the ABC in the leadup to this past weekend, where it was known that things were going to become extremely dangerous, and fraught. 

I particularly refer you to this quote:

Country Fire Authority (CFA) chief officer Jason Heffernan said authorities were keeping a close eye on areas where dry lightning strikes had occurred.

"In particular focusing on Gippsland, the Latrobe Valley, and also the north-eastern parts of the state where we know we've had dry lightning events," he said.

"It's not uncommon for more fires to pop up as the weather starts to turn back to being hot and windy."

Whilst I'd definitely not be surprised to find that the ABC have chosen to take such a quote out of context, or cut your comments short, I cannot tell you the disappointment that this sort of dismissal of the real life situation in the West of Victoria evokes.

The major complex fires in the West of the state were all caused by dry lightning strikes. The dry lightning warnings were as valid for the much larger area to the West of the State as they were for the East.

Granted it is not unknown, for Melbourne based media and organisations to be mostly blind to the existence, and/or the plight of the West, but for the Chief Officer of the agency on whom the responsibility for trying to hold back the flames threatening communities and livelihoods all over the West falls, to have blatantly declared that the West didn't deserve focus seems utterly unacceptable. 

Luckily the volunteers did not concur and they worked like trojans (as at 31st January Stawell Group alone have been called out on 16 Strike Teams since the 16th December). 

Karen Chisholm

(address / contact details provided in the email)

UPDATE as at 10th February.

Mr Heffernan kindly replied to my email, acknowledging his recent visit to the area, and clarifying that the ABC had indeed taken his comment out of a longer interview that did, indeed discuss the whole of the State. (His full comments are in the video attached to the above, which was clipped by the ABC to, as usual, concentrate on the East).

This, to be honest, comes as little surprise. The ABC's coverage of anything in Western Victoria is woeful. They have form over and over again in completely ignoring anything that occurs here, always prioritising Gippsland and the East. Even to the point where I've noted many times their utter failure to report on major incidents occurring between Melbourne's western suburbs and Ballarat. This failure has been ongoing, and frankly, is a large part of the reason why calling themselves "the emergency broadcaster" is regarded as an utter joke in these parts. They, needless to say, in this event, strike again. 

Having said that - this bias is well known and I'd like to see authorities calling them out more often. Goodness knows complaining to them directly as a now mostly non-viewer of their services, achieves nothing. They never respond, and if this is anything to go by, have made zero attempt to correct their obvious disinterest in a large part of their potential viewing audience. Needless to say we don't listen / watch or tune into anything much at all on the ABC anymore. 

Grampians / Gariwerd Fires December 2024

Himself was on a strike team today into Moyston and up into the Mafeking region in the Gariwerd / Grampians fires that are burning in December 2024. These are some images from the fireground where they were doing containment line monitoring.

Meanwhile, at home an hour away, the smoke rolled in this afternoon when the anticipated wind change arrived.

Firefighting Equipment (ie we're not here to copulate with spiders you know)

We've been accumulating fire fighting gear now for so many years. Every major fire that gets near, we reassess the gear, the plans, the age of us both, and we tweak and tweak and tweak. This year we're expanding the automatic sprinkler systems, with a view to eventually installing a full on roof version (finances are limiting what options we have at the moment - have you SEEN the cost of farm insurance recently!)

Right now the gear stands at:

PPE for us both - his is obviously CFA gear / mine's purchased.

Firefighting gear laid out on the back deck ready to grab and run

Then we've got three backpacks - two solid ones, and a softer, more pliable beastie that's a bit easier to get on. These are used to fighting ember attacks and small fires around the house and are kept full and ready to get on quickly.

We only aim to save the house and the immediate outbuildings. All the farm animals are moved into the house yard - nobody needs a garden, everybody needs a pet pig, alpacas, goats and sheep. 

The poultry tend to be mostly kept locked up on days that WE think are a bit dodgy. They have sprinkler systems through their yards / the walkways around them that are automatically temperature triggered.

Generator's are stored on pallet racks so we can pick them up and deploy as required.

We've got multiple generators, and the battery system that the house runs on - so the generators are deployed on pumps, power guzzlers like the cool room and anywhere else we think needs protecting on the mornings of any days that WE think are going to be bad so they are in place if we need them.

Pallet tank at the back of the house yard.

One of the pallet tanks sitting at the front of the house

Second pallet tank at the end of the house

Dotted around the house yard we've got various pallet tanks, with fittings that one of our fire pumps can connect straight up to. Worst comes to worst these can flood the area as well.

Old farm ute with a fire fighting unit including pump, extinguishers, hoses and water supply on board.

The firecart is forklifted onto the ute at the start of the season and we leave it parked in the shed most of the time - which makes the run to the local town to pick up feed a right pain in the rear, but at least we can roll that out quickly. On days where WE think the threat is bad we position the ute in relation to incoming wind.

Firefighting cart with its own pump, hoses and water supply sitting at one of the paddock entrances from the house yard.

The second fire cart sits at the front of the house / south-west sector of the property - it's a right pain to move in a panic and mostly goes behind the tractor (which is another story at the moment), so it sits in place. We can reach a fair distance with the gear on it.

Not pictured is the 22,500 litre tank around the back that's sequestered from all other use - just for firefighting or the firefighting pump on a standalone cart that we can move quickly as needed.

Everything's got CFA fittings on it, everything started regularly, maintained, checked.

Anything that's electric has some sort of backup and isn't part of the "core plan".

The house is protected from extended power loss by the battery bank. The air con's only turned on if a) we've got enough water and b) there's nothing flying about in the air.

We monitor the boundaries half hourly, checking for signs / smell of smoke / people behaving oddly / header's running / dust going up / wind directions / speed / temperature.

We don't leave the place on days where it's warm, windy, dodgy. Everything's also monitored by a network of cameras so we can see if something's amiss (and I don't just mean those blasted foxes - which are around in plague proportions at the moment).

Did the Weather Bureau really just mention Western Victoria and Drought in the same sentence....

Of course it was probably my imagination, I can't find the specific reference anywhere, but I'm sure I saw, in Ballarat's The Courier, a mention of Western Victoria and Drought.

Not "rainfall deficiency" / not "dry" but actual drought. They used the word. I was so shocked and surprised I forgot to bookmark the report. Not shocked about the drought bit - we're living it. Profoundly shocked that somebody in Melbourne had dragged out an atlas and a compass and figured out there was a "west" in Victoria. I guess it's possible somebody got lost on a driving holiday to Gippsland but even then, it's a big detour and it must have come as a hell of a surprise for most people to discover a) there is Western Victoria; and b) it's a bloody big area. Imagine how amazed they are going to be if they find out how much of their grain comes from out here. 

But looking at:

https://www.afac.com.au/docs/default-source/bushfire-seasonal-outlook/spring-2024/afac-seasonal-bushfire-outlook_spring-2024.pdf

The seasonal bushfire outlook is suggesting we're all gonna die.

No. Shit. Sherlock.

We're going into this summer with a yearly rainfall of 492.6mls (up to November). That's, what, slightly more than half of 2023 when we got 805.9mls. Which was around 2/3rds of 2022, which was around 2/3rds of 2021 and on it goes. The hassle with those last few years was also that what we got tended to come in massive downpours which caused flooding, washed out fences and chaos. And little of it into tanks or dams. 

So we find the idea of "average yearly rainfall figures" a great steaming pile of bullshit - unless they are spreading it over 50 years - in which case we might pay attention.

But we've been buying in water for animals now for so many years I can't remember when it started (and trust me - that's unbelievably expensive compared to what city people pay in water rates - it's eye-wateringly (if we had any) expensive). We've managed to avoid house water buy ins so far, mostly by not using water in the house. We have shower's that are < 1 minute (we use a watersaver on the shower that means we can turn the water on and off with a paddle attachment). This year we've done that all year round, normally we give ourselves a couple of minutes under the shower in winter but not this year. Which was interesting because when it's as dry as this its also frosty and bloody freezing. But combine that with minimal laundry (god I laughed at somebody on the radio a while ago suggesting it wasn't hygienic to not wash pillowslips every day... I mean ffs!), and minimal everything else and we sort of stagger through most years. Which is a hassle because the main aircon is evaporative so we cook frequently overnight because of the complicated use case required to justify turning it on. We've also had some help from the conditions and the gardens and orchards are pretty well gone now.

But this year you can really see the carnage. We've got dead gumtrees all around - not just in the bush but on the property and road verges. There was a tiny bit of grass growth when we had the single down pour we've had this year but that's dried off and we've been walking through crackling dry grass, dry gum leaves and dust for months now. And the dust is getting worse - even startled ourselves recently driving home - dust storm that looked for all the world like a smoke showing until we stopped worrying, and had a good look (could everyone driving down highways right now do the same thing - dust is brown / smoke is white or black, dust tends to move behind whatever is throwing it into the air / smoke doesn't do 100ks - immediately / granted it can if the wind is blowing). Which it's looking like it's going to do all summer - god we've had some wind and heat already, and today and this weekend we're nudging 40 already.

Wonderful.

Needless to say it's going to be a shit of a summer, after an absolute shit of a year. 

Pavarotti the Goat

About 4 years ago now, early one Sunday morning we went to take our dogs for their normal morning meander around the paddock, only to realise we were being watched by 3 faces from the verge on the side of the highway.

Three beautiful male goats, their ears still bleeding from where the tags had been removed had spent the night up against our fence, drawn we assume by the sounds of us feeding the alpacas, sheep and pigs the night before. Luckily they'd remained safe on the extremely busy highway, although how we've got no idea.

Then there was the problem (we thought) of how we were going to get them off the highway without incident, as my partner made it to the front gate only to find them standing in the middle of the road, at the bottom of the ridge that would mean any of the grain trucks that hurtle down the road wouldn't even see them until the very last minute.

But the boys took one look at him and ran towards him, following him straight down our drive to our house gate, following him and the cart of hay from there through to the paddock, and into the pigs holding yard.

Nobody claimed them. Some utter piece of shit had obviously just dumped them. They were tame, hand raised we'd guess, their dehorning had been botched and they were desperately thin with overgrown toenails and in need of some care.

They've been here ever since - last thing in the world we needed or wanted. They've been a joy and a source of constant amusement with only occasionally proving to be right pains in the arse. We named them the "Three Tenors" and now we've only got 2 of them.

Pav was always slightly different from the other two. He was quieter. More cuddly. More inclined to get himself into trouble. We've had to extract him from a few hazards, we've had problems with the botched horn, we've always had to trim his nails more than the other two, and he's always been a slightly different shape and perpetually hungry. Which made his sudden refusal to eat a couple of weeks ago a bit of a shock. After initially investigating if he might have urinary tract / stone problems, it then became apparent that his rumen had shut down. Long story short, we tried all the suggested methods of getting it to kick back into action, but there was something underlying going on, and within a week or so, he still couldn't eat and was starting to show signs of weakness. So we had to intervene and he's now buried with the elderly alpaca, Pascoe, and pig Billie, who we've also lost this year. 

It's going to be "one of those years" as everyone, including us, shows signs of age. It's been a hard hard year already and we're not looking forward to how it continues to play out, although, touch wood, so far, everyone else is upright and looking okay. And we're watching, oh boy are we watching.

Electricity Providers

We have a grid interactive system on the farm. Solar panels and a battery on the house and EV. Grid backup for that system in case of need (still got to work long hours in front of computer equipment), plus there are pumps, sheds and various setups around the place that are grid connected still. We have got standalone solar setups wherever possible, but with the lengths of electric fences and stuff that has to keep ticking over, the electricity bill is always there. And to get rid of bottled gas we've replaced the oven / cooktop with an electric / induction combo.

Mind you, the sheer gouge that has been the last couple of bills from a standard supplier were horrific. So we looked for alternatives.

Did all the comparison websites, nothing was looking at all interesting or providing that much in the way of opportunities to do something positive about the usage whilst not killing the world in the process.

Anyway, after a happenstance article came across this lot:

https://www.amber.com.au

Their claim to fame:

Save with Cheaper Wholesale Energy

Now I will admit there was a hell of a lot to like about this model.

1. It's disruptive technology. By knowing the wholesale price and being able to shapeshift your usage you can play the market at it's own game. Not for everyone (see below) but if there's something we love it's the possibility of screwing with "markets"
2. Full disclosure. You know the wholesale price in half-hourly increments - and you can see the predictions for 12 hours ahead.
3. Battery / usage optimisation. They work out the best times to pull energy in, to leave our solar generation alone, to use grid inputs when they are cheap, and to use the battery when it's not. They will also sell back to the grid at optimal rates. We can also do all that manually if we want to.
4. They tell you the "green" status of the grid along the way - but this game is mostly about the financials. Which works out to what we want anyway because RENEWABLES ARE CHEAPER (contrary to the utter lies and bullshit coming out of the LNP and their nuclear look at me look at me look at me game).

It's not for everyone. This system works for us because:

1. Grid interactive system
2. Own solar generation
3. A Battery (they support a range of different types)
4. The ability to timeshift actions (helps to work from home so you can be careful when you run dishwashers / washing machines / power hungry cooking devices etc)
5. We put in the effort to monitor, manage, if you don't do so you might find you'll have a higher bill than from a standard provider.
6. We know it's going to be seasonal, we're going to take a bit of a hit at some times of the year and win at others. (This sort of levelling up is part of what the traditional suppliers do when they come up with their prices plus their premiums). 
7. We're prepared to pay a monthly subscription

We've been running on this system for only a short time now. The first few days were a test of nerves, but it's starting to learn our behaviour patterns and we're seeing real adjustments in our usage levels.  We can see EXACTLY what the next bill is going to be, what our usage is, when and if the battery has been charged, used, sold back and at what prices everything happens. We're aware that this is the worst time of the year - lots of sun but it's low in the sky / our solar system isn't the greatest right now because of tree coverage (although if this sodding years long "rainfall deficiency" doesn't end soon they'll all die out and that's one problem solved...).

The phone app shows you the projected pricing / usage in a really clear, easy to understand way.

Their ongoing "info" emails have been informative, useful and the language is clear enough for somebody like me to follow (he's the grid / electric / whatever understanding person - I'm the one that has to figure out when best to run everything).

The downside - there's a bit of a tendency to doom scroll the upcoming pricing, mildly panic about the WHAT PRICE AT 7.00AM FFS that's ridiculous, what can we turn off, oh hang on the battery....

We've adjusted the EV charging schedule (bought a hub to help with that). And we've switched power boards around to get rid of the dreaded standby load. General tidy up in other words.

We're not getting rid of the industrial sized coolroom though. There's no way in hell we can afford to do little shopping runs for odds and ends - it's the big haul as much as possible home and use it / bulk buy model that means we're all still eating something...