Dylan McConnell

I’m going to be a lot more active on this platform. If you know me from the other place, hello! Could you please give this a share to help me find my people.

Pic unrelated - but me on a run along the Rhône and Saône in Lyon! 💕

(... This is expected - an old figure on what it SIPS profile was supposed to look like)

Somewhat ironic that a consequence of Waratah BESS being "In Service" for SIPS (and getting some media attention) ... is that is not participating in the market anymore, and appears to be doing nothing 🔌💡

A screenshot fromm a webpage called ;'winderful' which show the UK is currently generating 14 gigawatts of electricity from wind turbines. That is 70% of our demand

Yes, it's windy, yes it's not always windy, but now when it is, we get the vast majority of our electricity in the UK from trump goading 'windmills.' They do work, they are not a con, they don't kill whales, anyone who believes that dumb garbage deserves our maximum derision.

Taylor Swift is filling a ‘blank space’ in academic research A new book by University of Melbourne researchers explores how Swift studies is bringing the cultural phenomena of Taylor Swift into academia.

We’re getting ready to launch our Taylor Swift book this week! Check out this piece on Pursuit about the collection @eloisefaichney.bsky.social @emmawhatman.bsky.social @autnews.bsky.social

pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/Tay...

Open-Source Energy Modelling in Australia – Building Tools, Capacity, and Collaboration Follow up from panel session on open-source energy modelling at the State of Energy Research Conference 2025.

🔌💡 A few weeks ago some of our team ran a panel on “Open-Source Energy Modelling in Australia – Building Tools, Capacity, and Collaboration” at SoERC 2025. If you have thoughts, opinions or experiences in this space, we'd love to hear them here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

.. though as of a couple of days ago Waratah SIPS in service - so I don' think it's doing much of anything at the moment (at least wholesale market wise)

But yes - with all the capacity coming on line, will look different by summer!

Everything Open 2026 | Canberra, Australia

Huzzah!
Everything Open is heading to the University of Canberra 21-23 January 2026 Call for sessions and sponsors is out now!

2026.everythingopen.au

Help us get the conversation started!

#EverythingOpen

@linuxaustralia.bsky.social
@everythingopen.au

July Update:

🔌💡

Allowing foreign owned gas corporates to export 80% of our gas hasn’t just put up your gas bills… but your electricity bills too!

As the chart👇 shows, expensive gas power stations largely set the electricity price in the NEM

Renewables keep prices lower.

The killing code: strange symbols in a WA settler’s diaries lay bare frontier atrocities

www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

Attn Aus energy nerds: we ran an open-source energy modelling panel at a conference a fortnight ago, and (..predictably/ironically) had a bit of a tech stuff up on the day...

On the plus side, can now circulate this to a wider group of people (google form here: forms.gle/sZX3RQdxFkwK...) 🔌💡

Funding eight new grant projects | Energy Consumers Australia

🔌💡We're excited to receive funding from ECA for our project "Information needs for consumer electrification". The project will explore the information needs of consumers who are electrifying and develop resources to provide tailored information:
🔗 energyconsumersaustralia.com.au/news/funding...

July Update:

🔌💡

Concerns protest could ‘impede Sydney drivers’ solved by getting basically the whole city at the protest

"Turns out roughly a hundred thousand people wanted to cross the bridge at the time of the march" said one organiser

Read more: chaser.com.au/general-news...

.. sure - but are you saying there are now plenty of people are installing batteries outside the scheme?

(I had thought - perhaps incorrectly - that the folks I know installing them without solar were also accessing the scheme)

.. I am aware of folks that seem to be installing them without solar?

..do you have any idea why they are called "solar batteries"?

Not at all a coincidence that this type of clean-energy comms - which presents a positive case in forceful terms rather than trying to dance around the issue - is coming almost exclusively from non-US firms. The comparison tells us a lot about why the IRA failed. More below:

1/9

What an absolutely horrific sentence.

Even more horrific that this has become commonplace.

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

Cripes!

"Throughout the month of July 2025, 19,592 solar batteries were installed, providing a total nominal capacity of 344.1 MWh. The average nominal battery size installed has been 18.2 kWh."

Alec Stapp @AlecStapp ... When an unstoppable force (environmental review) meets an immovable object (also environmental review): Sam Enright'... Subscribe Sign in Ireland's state-owned energy supply company is now planning to decommission its own wind farms, because it failed to file an environmental impact assessment for them in 2003. In a Kafkaesque twist, the project may be saved, because tearing down wind turbines itself requires an environmental impact statement.

Right-wing abundance-bros operate in an ecosystem of ultra-low-information, mostly on a combination of X and substack, with the big accounts just spewing out vaguely correct-sounding chunks of text that crumble at the slightest interrogation.

This has ~1.2k RTs on X, and it's just....made up

Attn Aus energy nerds: we ran an open-source energy modelling panel at a conference a fortnight ago, and (..predictably/ironically) had a bit of a tech stuff up on the day...

On the plus side, can now circulate this to a wider group of people (google form here: forms.gle/sZX3RQdxFkwK...) 🔌💡

Somebody asking Google Gemini to give them a random 32-character string and it responding with “aBcDeFgHiJkLmNoPqRsTuVwXyZ0123456789”

Lmao this rules so hard

Such a grim fate for Cosmos, which used to be the premier science mag in Australia (wrote a few pieces for them, back in the day).

We (former contributors) found out last year Cosmos has been training its slop engine on our work:

bsky.app/profile/keta...

How the UK’s cold weather payments need to change to help prevent people freezing in winter The cold weather payment is important but needs to be made in advance of freezing temperatures.

In a recent @uk.theconversation.com article we* explain how insights from #smart_meter data can inform the re-design of #energy_policy, using #Cold_Weather_Payment as an example.

* we @tinafawcett.bsky.social #Brenda_Boardman and I drew upon two studies (below)

theconversation.com/how-the-uks-...

Open letter against the adoption of the Australian Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism's Plan - Overland literary journal We, the undersigned university researchers, educators, students and professional staff, call on the Australian Government to reject the unprecedented attack on academic freedom and the autonomy of uni...

University friends, please read, sign and share this open letter: overland.org.au/2025/07/open...

'Mum, I don't want your life.' Why young girls are saying no to everything we wanted. “Feminist exhaustion isn’t feminism’s fault.”

Some comments from me in this piece, the most important being that I think anti-trans “feminists” have sucked the air out of the feminist movement

www.mamamia.com.au/feminist-exh...