Links CONTACT:  podcast@worldorganicnews.com   Explainer: what can Tesla’s giant South Australian battery achieve? — Random Thoughts http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-fJf      In defense of Yeomanry.      http://www.worldorganicnews.com/published-books/long-pieces-and-ideas/ Vermicomposting: Tips from First Timers — EcoBLOGic http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-fIV 1.5 Acres of High Intensity, No-Till Vegetable Production – Neversink Farm — Permie Flix http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-fJr Rural New Zealand Quarter Acre Permaculture Farm / Market Garden — growingarden http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-fJO **** This is the World Organic News for the week ending 17th of July 2017. Jon Moore reporting! This week we look at the Tesla battery in South Australia, one version of vermicomposting and two examples of intensive, organic veggie production. So to the Tesla Battery! The post entitled: Explainer: what can Tesla’s giant South Australian battery achieve? From the blog Random Thoughts explains: It was announced this past week that Tesla has won a tender to set up a 100 megaWatt battery in conjunction with the Hornsdale wind farm. A little background is necessary. Back in September 2016 a huge storm rolled across South Australia. A gas fired electricity generator was closed down by it operators on the ground that electricity spot prices were likely to be too low that day to justify running the plant. As the storm rolled in some wind farms were powered down and some high tension power lines were ripped out of the ground. Widespread blackouts resulted. For some reason, some members of the farther right of politics in this country have a problem with wind power in particular and renewables in general. So the knee jerk reaction was to blame the wind farms even when transmission lines were ripped out of the ground. So electricity supply is political. Will the new Tesla battery system help? Probably not a great deal. Quote: The project will incorporate a 100MW peak output battery with 129 megawatt hours of storage alongside Neoen’s Hornsdale windfarm, near Jamestown. When fully charged, we estimate that this will be enough to power 8,000 homes for one full day, or more than 20,000 houses for a few hours at grid failure, but this is not the complete picture. The battery will support grid stability, rather than simply power homes on its own. It’s the first step towards a future in which renewable energy and storage work together. End Quote It is the grid stability and the example set which is the greatest outcome of this project. Once the idea of batteries set within the grid becomes established, price signals will complete the job. Now we don’t just need electric batteries. Batteries are nothing but a chemical form of storage. The authors of the post are themselves working on a different form of energy storage:  off-river pumped hydro energy storage. This uses the mature technology of the hydro industry to storage renewable energy in the form of potential energy rather than chemical. By using renewable electricity to pump water from say the bottom of a mine to a reservoir at ground level, the energy is held and then released back through the system to turn the potential energy into electric by running the pumps “backwards” and allowing the water to pool at the bottom of the mine again. The storage form is somewhat immaterial, it is the storage to stabilise the grid which is most important. Creative minds are being allied to this matter and the future look bright. There is even some argument that microgrids rather than nation wide grids are a better solution. Localisation and interconnection of generating nodes require less infrastructure and therefore less loss of power moving electricity from say a hydro scheme in one state to consumers in another. Indeed the local seems to be answer to many of the issues we face today. I have argued elsewhere in the blog for localised food production in a piece entitled: In Defense of A Modern Yeomanry – Small mixed farms as the answer. Food, electricity,