Hi Serge
On (30 Jan 98) Serge Brouillard wrote to Alec Cameron...
 SB>     It's nice to know that Canadians are not the only ones with 
 SB>     this sort of problem, and solutions. 
 SB>  
 SB>     You use solar power or wind power most, in Australia 
 SB>     where you are ? 
Wind power is long established for water pumping, and 32v DC generation
because the population density is very low, and rural. The modern wind genes
on farms tend to be 12v or 24v, with batteries/ inverters to 240v 50Hz
Solar power is used for:
River navigation lamps, isolated public coin phones, phone enquiry boxes on
unattended railroad stations, historic privately owned railroad carriages
[which may be left parked long periods at remote sites], pleasure cruisers 
nd
sailboats. About 40kM from here is a huge carpark for newly imported foreign
cars: maybe 200 acres under agricultural shadecloth. The area lighting is
fluorescent- solar panelled. Like a gaol, the surrounding country is bare
which eases the pressure on the small security satff.
In the cities, hobbyists are "visible" as their homes have both solar heaters
and solar elec panels.
Two or three large remote towns have costly!! wind generator and solar elec
stations so as to reduce the running hours of the regular diesel generators.
This probably instills a sense of community spirit among the users [a good
thing!] thus helping to manage the depleted resources and cut back the costly
road freight costs for oil.
It was once Govt policy to build railroads which routes
then got populated. Sadly, the availability of cheap autos after 1930s,
resulted in folk over-using the roads. Rail patronage hence revenue, dropped
severely. The railroads with a large staff and little income were a tax 
urden
and business and smart accountants from US and UK were hired as Advisers and
these guys sensibly, said "close down". You may have had similar experiences.
The losers were the elderly and other less mobile folk. One bad loss where I
live, is the mail service. Our main city in NSW is Sydney, 165kM away. Like
most of NSW rural towns, we previously had a fast mail service. The postal
workers did the sorting en route, on Mail Trains. Mail posted in Sydney would
leave Sydney the same day, and our mail train "Temora Mail" would travel
express stopping at major mail nodes, dropping mail here at 2am. The last car
of these trains had an external posting box marked LATE FEE. You would put a
"tuppeny stamp" on your envelope it to pay supplement for the express
service. Office messengers at the end of each day would jog to the rail
station to deposit these "express" items right there on the train.
Now our mail takes 2- 3 days, because it travels on driver- only highway 
trailers.
Our district mail node has moved out to a more remote site, and all of our
mail leaving and arriving Bundanoon sleeps there overnight!
Oh in my own home I have just two panels/ batteries. One is dedicated to
garden lighting out front by the street, the other powers the garden shed/
workshop where I can do light soldering, bench grinding- by blinding light! 
y
two attempts at making windmill genes failed, but I had a cute one with a BIG
BLACK BIRD EYE painted on both sides of the fin. To keep birds from eating 
ur
apples/ pears/ peaches/ plums. The 'ole air rifle I surrendered to the 
olice,
as there was a big recovery/ purchase by the Govt so as to reduce the numbers
of unwanted guns.  Military style repeating and automatic weapons have been
banned.
Cheers....ALEC
... If you don't go to other people's funerals, they won't go to yours.
--- PPoint 1.92
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