Swimming Pool

Another trip to the local hardware store this morning.  This time five metres of 6mm plastic tubing was purchased for Jan's swimming pool acid dispenser.  The pool system is supposed to automatically dispense Muriatic Acid to maintain the required water pH balance.  You may recall I discovered the original tubing had burst and drained all the acid from the 5 litre container. 

Before replacing the original tubing I read the label on the new plastic tubing to satisfy myself it was acid resistant .

I'm not sure whether the acid or the sunlight has changed the colour of the original tubing.  It's gone from clear to milky white.  After some research I'd identified muriatic acid is actually hydrochloric acid and I've already ordered another five litres.

Jan started grumbling when an email was received from the State Department of Transport advising the annual trailer registration fee was due.

Annual trailer registration breakdown

• Licence Fee  $57.95
• Insurance $13.23
• GST (VAT) on Insurance $1.32
• Insurance Duty $1.45
• Recording Fee $10.30
• Total $83.95

Governments do have a way of collecting additional money.  The insurance is 3rd Party, which I won't quibble about.  Then there is GST(VAT) on the fee.  A tax on a tax.  Then the State government collects insurance duty.  A tax on the tax and tax.  Finally there is a Recording Fee; which I would have thought was part of the Licence Fee.  So what did the Licence Fee actually buy me?  Certainly not the cost of maintaining a record of the ownership of the trailer. 

Geoff,

The electric utility network company is owned by the State government.  West Australia has a number of issues with it's electrical network.  The first is too much residential rooftop solar power being produced during the day with no means of storing the surplus.  The base power is provided by old thermal power (coal fired) power station which are steadily being decommissioned.  The network provider is starting to experiment with local network batteries.  The idea is the utility company gets residents to buy a share of the battery and contribute their surplus power for storage.  However the utility company then sells the power back to the resident at an increased price. I don't see why I should contribute to the cost of a neighbourhood battery and store my surplus energy only to have to buy it back. 

Eventually residential storage batteries will reach a price point where they are financially viable.  We will install one at that time and disconnect from the network.  As more people disconnect from the network the cost of maintaining it (poles, wires, transformers, sub-stations, etc) will be borne by those who don't have solar and a battery.  The poor, those renting, etc.  In anticipation of this happening the government will have reduced it's investment in infrastructure to cut costs.  It would not surprise me if they also legislated making it compulsory to be connected to the network in order to continue to receive the daily service charge to maintain the network.

The government already restricts the amount of solar the resident can install to a maximum of 5kW if they are connected to the network.  One assumes that once disconnected from the network the resident can install as much solar capacity as they want.  We will need more to charge our electric cars