The farmers certainly haven't forgotten. Obviously a few months of near average temperatures does not disprove the century of warming trend.

Here are some facts. The BOM [Bureau of Meteorology) tells us that January 2019 was the warmest month on record for 90 per cent of NSW.

Between April 2017 and September 2019 most of NSW and Queensland experienced the driest period on record. Globally, nine of the hottest 10 years on record have occurred in the last 10 years. The trend is clear with the global temperature increasing by 1.5 degrees since 1900 in lockstep with the increasing amount of the greenhouse gas, CO2, in the atmosphere.

As someone with qualifications in physics and renewable energy, I am happy to assure Mr Thiele that he is wrong in his claims and assumptions about the energy network. The market operator, (AEMO) and the Energy Security Board have both concluded that the renewable energy is not a threat to the supply of electricity and that the Hunter gas plant is not needed.

All of us need to consider what kind of planet our children and grandchildren will be left with if we don't act to reduce CO2 emissions.

In response to Chris Smith letter 'Not sold on Solar' (Examiner, July 1) I feel it misses the point of household solar.

The viability of solar is not just affected by what you are paid for your export. To get the best return on home solar you need to use the electrons your home generates at the time they are being produced, saving you in excess of 20c/kWh dependent on your retailer tariffs.

In June this year my home used 407kWh, (this included 66kWh to charge my EV). Only 264kWh (33 per cent) came from the grid, while 143kWh were used as generated, and 138kWh was exported. Only when you generate surplus will you be paid the feed-in tariff even if it's only 5c/kWh. Turning off you solar only costs you more as you are not using what you would be generating, had my solar been turned off I would have had to pay for 407kWh and not received the feed in tariff for what was exported.

The two problems for solar generation currently are the unexpected uptake of the installation of solar panels and an under-use of the generated power during daylight hours, the only time they work of course, which is fed back into the network causing issues for network providers.

To help solve this the net payment has been reduced.

Why? To encourage consumers to buy storage batteries.

The problem is that the uptake for batteries to supply consumers at night has been very poor. Given the investment by vested interests in this technology, pressure has been bought to bare and the net rate has again been reduced in the hope consumers will move to battery storage.

Could this be called market manipulation?

This pandemic is still showing us how easy viruses can spread throughout communities.

Again we need to be extremely careful and get tested. We also need to respect and follow the rules implemented by the the aged care facilities when visiting loved ones.

Follow the health authorities rules and get vaccinated and hopefully we can all survive this terrible crisis

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