My trimaran is now sold to my mate Tony and and its time to repurpose this website. The name Current Sunshine was intented to represent the source of fuel to run the trimaran — that is, from today’s sunshine, as opposed to ancient sunshine that we use from fossil fuels.
The name Current Sunshine encapsulates my interest in renewable technologies and my work in promoting the use of renewable energy based on its commercial credentials. There is much interest in the adoption of renewable energy for the purpose of minimising man-made global warming. This topic generates divided opinion and creates much separation and so the focus of this site will be directed to sharing other compelling reasons for using renewable energy.
The use of distributed renewable energy is ideally suited for adoption in the Australian electricity grid where have large areas of sparse population and the cost of supplying electricity using poles and wires is expensive and requires large subsidies to keep prices of delivery at parity with city dwellers. Local generation and storage has commercial advantages and is being adopted by electricity distributors such as Ergon energy.
In city areas the use of solar power is particular interesting for businesses where their electricity demand is largely during the daylight hours and can be substantially provided by solar power with grid backup. Prices of solar installations are falling rapidly and can supply power at about grid parity.
The technology that particularly interests me at present is pumped hydro for energy storage and there is an ideal site for this in my local area. I am also interested in community engagement and connection and I wish to explore the possibility of building a hydro power station that is owned and operated by the local community. I’ll write more about this in another post soon.
I’ll also be changing the look and structure of this site to support the new purpose. Stay tuned…