Berkeloid

The charge controllers are likely fine (I am going to put some into practice soon, but full disclosure I haven't yet) however as with most products from Chinese sellers their stats are a little too optimistic. Most Western countries will build a safety buffer in to their products (so a 10 amp controller will work all day at 10 amps, and maybe up to 11 or 12 amps) whereas a Chinese 10 amp controller can probably only peak at 10 amps for a few seconds with additional cooling, and may die prematurely if it sits over 6-7 amps for too long. You see the same thing with inverters - western ones are sold by their continuous rating, like "500 W (1 kW peak)" whereas Chinese ones sell by the peak rating it can only reach for a second or two at a time, like "1 kW inverter" and then in the fine print buried in the listing "500 W continuous rating". Occasionally there are exceptions but these seem to be mistakes, as the majority of stuff is advertised with the biggest and best numbers even if they aren't really reachable.

So as long as you're aware of this and you over-spec everything by a good safety margin then you should be ok. This is assuming you choose a product that is genuine, and not a fake such as a 10 amp controller with a 30 amp sticker on it, of course.

If you're relatively new to solar and don't know exactly what you want and how to figure out whether your Isc is within limits, the Voc has a good safety margin to not blow up the controller, etc. then you may find it cheaper to buy from a local company, because although you will pay more you should only have to buy once. If you go with Aliexpress you may have to buy three or four different models until you find one that works the way you want, and then quickly go back and buy more of them before they change the internals. Fine if you're building a bunch of larger systems with dozens of controllers, but it will probably work out more expensive for a small system with only one charge controller total.

It's true that in some Chinese cultures cheating the system is how things are done, but this doesn't apply to other Asian cultures. Japanese people for example are very respectful of others and culturally are much less likely to bend the rules when compared to natural born Australians, so you can't really lump them all into one bucket as there are huge differences between them.

Very few Asians are refugees. A refugee is someone who escapes their homeland because their life is in danger, and is allowed to settle in a new country without meeting the normal requirements for citizenship. International students paying for a plane ticket and going back home a few years later when they're finished studying don't even come close to the definition of refugee. Have you gone through a university campus carpark recently? There are so many Asian students driving BMWs and other expensive cars because their families are rich, and that's why they are able to study abroad. Why would they want to live here when back home their family is powerful and politically connected?

While they are here they pay GST and other taxes just like everyone else. Again, just look at COVID when the annual influx of international students stopped - companies went bust and white Australians lost their jobs because there weren't enough people coming into the country and buying their stuff.

True refugees may well be a drain on society while they get back on their feet, but Asians sure don't count in that. I'd be interested to know where you got the stats showing how many refugees are Asian? I can't find any stats on refugees, only on which countries migrants come from and that says this year the most came from India, followed by China, New Zealand and the UK.

What other cultures would you prefer on our streets instead of Asians? I guess you'd rather we change the law to allow burqas and mandate all food be halal as per Islamic law, so we can get more Muslims in to replace all the Asians? No thanks, I like the fact that whatever country Asian people are from, they are happy to follow the laws we have and not try to change them.

Sydney has many more Asians than Brisbane if that's what you're asking? I don't think many are refugees though, most seem to be international students here to study. That's why you see a lot of younger people but far fewer older people.

As far as people moving here permanently, if you follow what China has done in Hong Kong, it's awful. Those people are welcome here as far as I'm concerned. Most of them would return home in an instant if the Chinese government left and things went back the way they were, so you can't blame them for escaping a bad situation.

There are plenty worse cultures that could be filling up our streets. At least most Asian cultures are generally courteous and encourage you to get a job, work hard, and ultimately pay taxes that benefit us all. They also don't try to change our laws or force us to accept their religious ideas either as some other cultures do. It could be much worse than having Asians here believe me.

It's the ones who don't work and just leech off society that bother me, and most of the ones who do that were born here. (Like the guy that carjacked the taxi the other day, we certainly don't need people like that in our society.)

Traditionally the prices are supposed to double every seven years but thanks to the GFC in 2008 there was a huge reset and prices in many Brisbane areas have only recently started moving again after COVID. But that means there's a lot of "catching up" to do, so everyone is expecting a sudden jump where the prices go up much quicker than normal. Couple that with the upcoming Olympics and it's easy to see why some people are predicting a massive increase in house prices.

It's just a shame so many employers want employees back in the office for jobs where remote work is easily doable. Imagine if all those office workers could live and work remotely out in country towns where they are desperate for more people to keep the town running, freeing up inner city housing and making it much more affordable for those people whose jobs cannot be done remotely. Not to mention cutting down on peak hour traffic. It seems like a win/win but no, managers have begun to realise how unnecessary they are so we can't have that, everyone has to fill up the roads commuting and live close to the city to keep house prices high, even when it's completely unnecessary.

It certainly is for tenants, you're way better off financially to buy if you can. But that can be difficult for a lot of people, either because they just don't earn enough or because they do earn enough but they don't want to sacrifice their lifestyle today for financial security tomorrow.

I can certainly see both sides of the argument. If you're an introvert and you aren't going to go out drinking all weekend anyway then it makes sense to save that money for your own house, but if you're an extrovert and you'd be depressed if you never went out on weekends, well what's the point of spending years in misery saving for a house that you're never going to spend much time in anyway once you have it?

Yes I'm getting subsidised assets partly funded by other people's labour, and in return I'm providing them with a place to stay they couldn't otherwise afford. I'm not forcing them to rent from me, they are free to live somewhere else if they don't like what I'm offering.

I wouldn't have offered the place to rent if there was no chance of making money off it, why else would I sacrifice my time and money if I wasn't going to get anything in return? That would make no sense. Maybe some people put up a spare room for rent out of the goodness of their hearts, but for the vast majority it's a business. You put in some time and money and you hope to get a payoff at the end of it. Why is that so controversial?

There's no weaselling about it - you rent out a property to get a tenant to help pay off your debt, that's how it works. Are you paying $200+/week from your salary to random people to help them out with their rent? No? What makes you think a landlord would want to do the same?

I don't think you understand how the whole idea of rentals work. It's not some magic supply of free housing, it's ordinary everyday people like you and me who scrimp and save in the hope of getting a long term payoff that makes up for all the sacrifice.

I don't think it sucks to be me, I think it sucks to be a tenant renting at the moment as the supply start to dry up and rents increase beyond what they can afford, thanks to poor government policy inadvertently making renting more expensive than it should be.

I definitely want them, as I'm hoping it will make house prices go up!

I have four rental properties I want to sell because I'm sick of the government interfering even though I try to do the right thing by my tenants (in the 15 years I've had rentals I've never kicked anyone out or taken any bond money, all my tenants left because their job moved or they got married and needed a bigger place). It really annoys me that one arm of the government puts up interest rates to take money out of people's pockets, yet the other arm says no no you can't pass those increases on to tenants, you can't take money out of their pockets! Like make up your mind, either take the money fairly from everyone or take it from nobody! I'm just waiting for the house prices to go up enough that I can break even when I sell (so I can pay the loans off in full) - if I sold today I'd still have a debt of around $100k to pay off - no thanks.

Apparently I'm not alone, a lot of other landlords are also planning to sell in the coming year so it looks like rents are only going to go up as fewer properties are available for rent. So ironic that a policy was hastily brought in to try to limit rising rents but it will end up making the problem worse, but I guess that's normal for government.

It will be nice not to have to subsidise people's rent any more though. At the moment I'm paying around 30% of the rent out of my pocket on top of the rent paid by the tenants in order to meet the bank loan repayments, and that's on top of the loan repayments for my own place (a tiny one-bedroom unit) so the majority of my salary (and rental income) just goes to the bank. That was the deal going into it though so it comes as no surprise, and I wouldn't mind so much except most of my tenants seem to have way more money than I do, driving cars that are less than five years old and all I can afford is a 13 year old ex-taxi. One of my tenants is in the same unit complex as me so we're almost neighbours, and they love getting Uber Eats delivered all the time while I'm instead frequenting Coco's at Annerley to buy all the cheap stuff with expired best-before dates just to save a few bucks.

Maybe once I've sold I should start renting instead, tenants seem to have way more disposable cash than landlords do!

I thought you meant the bogans, get rid of them and the big dumb ute problem will solve itself with nobody to buy them

The video is showing as private now. I guess if you could use a YouTube video downloader while it's (I presume) streaming you might be able to keep it and perhaps re-upload it to another channel so it can remain public?

I lived in Yeronga without a car for 10 years. I hardly ever used public transport either (mostly because it was so inconvenient it was a whole day trip if you ever wanted to go anywhere). But I could do it because I was comfortable walking a lot. It was a 10 minute walk each way to get groceries, a 45 minute walk (4 km) to where I worked (so no gym membership needed), and being an introvert I didn't enjoy going out on weekends so that made it easy. The walk home from work was past the shops so I'd just buy a little (at least as much as I could carry) every 2-3 days on the way home from work, so I rarely had to make a specific trip to the shops.

If you're an extrovert and you have to be out in public all the time, the other advice here about living near good public transport connections is wise, but if you're an introvert it's probably beneficial to live within walking distance (or at least a short public transport trip) from where you work, and not too far from some grocery shops. That way food and work is taken care of.

I will admit though, after finally getting a car it's much nicer to be able to pop down to Bunnings to get something and be home again 30 minutes later, instead of having to set aside a whole day for the journey, or order it online and have to wait a week or two for it to arrive. I guess if you can afford it then a taxi or Uber could be another option, but if you do that too much then it won't take long before it's cheaper to own a car.

I ended up buying a cheap ~8 year old ex-taxi hybrid, which only gets driven once or twice a week so uses hardly any fuel (around $200/year) so the overall cost ended up being much less than I expected. It has made me a lot lazier though as I will drive the two minutes to the shops instead of walking for 10, so with WFH also reducing the amount of walking I'm doing I have put on quite a bit of weight (20 kg) so going without a car and having to do so much walking was certainly much better for my physical health.

I don't have any experience with it myself but a quick Google suggests it's edible: https://www.wildedible.com/bittercress

Hairy bittercress (Cardamine hirsuta) is a really unfortunate name for a wonderfully tasty edible weed that is perfect for foraging. It's a wild mustard, so its bitterness is more spicy-hot than bitter, though it's not nearly as hot as some other members of the Brassicaceae family. A more appropriate name would be Not-so-hairy and pleasantly-mild spicycress. Like all brassicas, Hairy bittercress is an excellent natural source of vitamin C. Its flavor profile is similar to watercress but bittercress is more readily available. It makes an excellent substitute for micro-greens. Use Hairy bittercress as a main salad green, garnish, or in a sandwich. The roots are also edible and can be blended with vinegar to make a sauce or dip that's similar to horseradish.

I presume you've tried to eat it but dislike the flavour?

That page says it can be invasive and best to harvest it by removing the whole plant, so I guess if you don't like the taste probably best to remove it before it becomes too established. But if you like the flavour I guess it won't be a problem dealing with it!

Having said that most weeds don't do damage to soil but rather their appearance is a sign of disturbance, and weeds will grow until the soil improves and other plants become established. So if it's not causing you any problems it's probably doing the soil some good having it growing.

I think for many people it's fear of the unknown. Once you understand how electricity behaves, you start to instinctively know what's dangerous and what's not. You can clearly see this in YouTube videos on solar, where people explain how their solar systems work. It's pretty clear which presenters know what they're talking about and which ones are just repeating things they've read without truly understanding what's going on. I think once you gain that fundamental insight into what's actually happening, everything else starts to fall into place and it makes a lot more sense, it's a lot less mysterious, and much less intimidating.