Newsletter #107

Rainbow Power Company Enewsletter #107 – 2 May 2007

Index:

1) New Products

2) Environmental News

3) The World Renewable Energy Market

4) Dishwashers

5) 30 th June – We Celebrate 20 years!! – (please note change of date)

This month we offer a few new Products for your consideration.

A) Have a look at the 5 stage automatic battery chargers made by Latronics. They are super efficient using special low loss Mosfets. Features include: LED Indicators; Wall mount design; battery type selector switch; full electric protection; DC circuit breaker – all with an Aussie 2 year warranty. For more info, visit our web shop or view the 1Mb pdf leaflet.
http://www.rpc.com.au/pdf/Latronics-Charger.pdf

b) We have a new heavy duty 240V to 13.8V DC power supply rated at 8.5A. This is suitable for running a small Danfoss (BD35) fridge, some chook incubators which we are getting, etc. For more details:
http://www.rpc.com.au/catalog/acdcpowersupply240vacto138vdc85a-p-2723.html

c) We have added a couple of 12V poultry egg incubators to our Web Shop. Have a look here for more details:
http://www.rpc.com.au/catalog/-c-1_130.html

Stay tuned in May for the Budget Speech when we expect to get some details about the AGO Solar Rebate for the coming 1 – 2 years.

Have a punt to guess how many times our Treasurer mentions Climate Change in his Budget Speech. https://secure.greenpeace.org.au/budget2007/index3.html

David Bradbury, Australian film maker, has a new film: “A Hard Rain'. Highly recommended viewing. David reminds us, that while we need a change in government, we need to ask all sides about their environmental and uranium mining policies. More details at: http://www.ebono.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1453&Itemid=45

With climate change news reports making headlines virtually every day, I thought I'd highlight a few statistics which I have come across recently.

According to Solar Outlook published by Navigant Consulting, the market grew by more than 41% in 2006 to reach 1982MWp of production. Sharp Solar was the largest manufacturer, followed by Q-Cells, Kyocera and Suntech (with BP Solar in ninth position).

Suntech has been in the news recently because it is headed by a Chinese Australian who obtained his PhD from Sydney University. As he couldn't find sufficient government and business interest in Australia, he moved back to China in 2001 and started Suntech with a small amount of capital. He is now reputed to be China's richest man worth $2.7 billion dollars. So much for Australia being a clever country at the forefront of the world's best environmental technologies.

Kyocera has just announced a US $250 million expansion in its world wide capacity. They plan to expand production from 240MW to 500MW annually, or enough solar systems to supply 142,800 houses annually.

A couple of months ago Prof David Mills from Australia, left Australia to settle in California to build the world's largest solar thermal plant. California Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger plans to cut greenhouse emissions by a massive 80% in the next 45 years.

All this makes the present Australian government look rather pathetic when it comes to supporting Renewable Energy and decreasing our carbon emissions.

Back in the USA, Cherry Hill reported in the Courier Post that with the $US400 billion spent on the Iraq war, some 400,000 wind generators could have been built at $US1M each. This could have powered 120 million homes. America has the capacity to build and install 80,000 wind generators a year.

While I suggest these figures might be a bit ‘academic' it does show that the world could make a very substantial improvement to global emissions. The cost of the conventional polluting power from technologies like coal needs to be increased and then power from Renewable Energy will come to the forefront.

I think it is time for a change in government in Australia!

I have had a few inquiries about ‘solar friendly' dishwashers – eg one you can program the hot water heater and dryer off. I've often wondered how much power they use if you supply your own hot water (ie via solar hot water system). Any ideas or recommendations would be appreciated

Please note that we have transferred our celebrations to Saturday 30t June – a day prior to our previous announcement. Plans are well underway and it looks like being quite a day/evening event not to be missed. For those of you planning to attend from out of town – we do have room for camping, either tents, vans, mobile homes. But please let us know for booking and allocating purposes a week in advance, if at all possible. Off site accommodation options can be advised if requested.

That's all for this month folks – send us your suggestions and contributions, they are most welcome. There is no need to send our newsletter back to us when you reply! If you would like price or product information, please tell us which country you are from if it is not evident from your e-mail address. This allows us to assess if local GST (tax) is applicable or whether 240 Volt 50HZ products will work in your country etc.

If you wish to change your email address or unsubscribe to the newsletter please follow the link below to our web site:
http://www.rpc.com.au/news/subscribe.html