Questions on sexuality and gender to be part of Census trial
Homes in Melbourne and Perth, as well as locations in regional Queensland, NSW and Western Australia, have been chosen for the voluntary test run.
Census general manager Jenny Telford said the trial run would be critical to ensuring the nationwide questionnaire would be successful. "We are testing our collection processes and IT systems to ensure our processes work well and that the form captures the right information, in the right way," she said.
"By taking part, you're helping us to improve the next Census for everyone and ensure it produces high-quality statistics."
Testing will also be carried out to allow people to carry out the Census through myGov. The 2016 Census was beset by technical issues after the website hosting the questionnaire crashed on the night of the survey. The Census test is to be carried out on 5 August.
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News.com.au
an hour ago
- News.com.au
Kristie Batten: Elevate hits milestone as uranium pilot plant sets sail
One of Australia's top mining journalists, Kristie Batten, writes for Stockhead every week in her regular column placing a watchful eye on the movers and shakers of the small cap resources scene. Elevate Uranium (ASX:EL8) is one step closer to proving up its patented U-pgrade beneficiation technology on a larger scale. Under the supervision of Elevate's senior metallurgist Andrew Jones, and with the assistance of Fremantle Metallurgy, the company built its first U-pgrade pilot plant. The completion of the fabrication and assembly of the plant was celebrated in Perth last week with a champagne toast. 'For many years, we've dreamt about it, and now the time has finally arrived,' Elevate managing director Murray Hill said during the event. The U-pgrade was designed to upgrade surficial uranium ores and was developed on ore from Elevate's Marenica uranium project in Namibia. Testwork completed to date has shown the technology concentrated the uranium by a factor of 50 and increased Marenica's ore grade from 93 parts per million uranium oxide to around 5000ppm. The technology has the potential to reduce operating and capital costs by around 50% when compared to conventional processing. 'The whole process of U-pgrade is not about concentrating uranium. It's about concentrating the gangue minerals and throwing them away, so that makes it counterintuitive,' Hill said. 'Hence, patentable, which is why we've got three patents around the world. 'The Chinese are very good at reverse engineering pieces of kit, but they can't reverse engineer a process like this, because of the know-how that we've established over a long period of time.' The plant is being packed up to be shipped to Namibia this week. It is expected to arrive there in October, where it will be assembled on site. Jones will be close behind, relocating his family to Namibia for six months to oversee the process. Hill said Jones had designed the plant to be flexible for different ore sources. The trial, which will process at least 60 tonnes of uranium material, is designed to de-risk the process prior to commercialisation. The results from operation of the plant are expected to confirm production of a low-mass high-grade concentrate, which will be used to inform design of a full-scale commercial U-pgrade plant. 'We hope to be one of the most prepared companies leading into design of a full-scale plant than anybody else, because we've set ourselves up for it,' Hill said. Uranium deposits advancing Alongside the pilot plant work, Elevate will also kick off a study on its Koppies uranium discovery in Namibia, one of the world's premier addresses for uranium development projects. Paladin Energy's operating Langer Heinrich mine and Deep Yellow's shovel-ready Tumas deposit are within 35km of Koppies. The company believes the U-pgrade process could significantly reduce Koppies' capital costs, relative to other uranium projects in Namibia as it has the potential to process more of the ore and lower the strip ratio. The Koppies project has a resource of 66.1 million pounds of uranium grading 192ppm. Half of the resource is within 7m of surface, with 95% within 18.5m, which will make it very cheap to mine. 'Forget about ISR – just get your shovel and your wheelbarrow and start digging,' Hill said. It also makes exploration cheap, with each drill hole only costing around $1000 each. While Elevate is well-funded with $21.7 million in the bank at the end of June, the cheap, shallow drilling allows it to run multiple rigs in Namibia while advancing studies. That strategy has resulted in four discoveries in Namibia since 2019, two of which are in resource. A high priority for exploration for the company is the Namib IV prospect, which is 10km from the southern portion of the Koppies resource. Intersections have included 1m at 300ppm uranium oxide from 1m; 1.5m at 730ppm from 5.5m; 3m at 606ppm from 3m; and 3.5m at 202ppm from 3m. Exploration to date has identified a mineralised area spanning 11km by 7.5km. Further step-out drilling is planned during this quarter to try to expand that boundary. Drilling to establish a maiden resource will kick off later this year. Elevate was also recently awarded a $112,000 grant to drill its Angela uranium project in the Northern Territory, which has an existing resource of 31Mlb at 1310ppm uranium oxide. The grant will be used to drill three new targets in September and October.
ABC News
4 hours ago
- ABC News
EV batteries are fit to run a home or even power the grid – but some car brands say 'no'
Richard Chapman likes to joke that his claim to fame was being treated to a cup of tea by James May, one of the trio of presenters on the hit former British motoring show Top Gear. It's a sign of his tastes. The English expat, who now calls the historic port city of Fremantle in Western Australia home, is a car nut — a self-described "petrol head". "I've absolutely adored cars ever since I knew what a car was," Chapman says. While that love has always extended to muscle cars, Chapman does not discriminate. These days, it equally applies to electric vehicles, or EVs. Richard Chapman knows the future of cars is electric. ( ABC News: Daniel Mercer ) "They're just incredible cars," he explains. "And for me, being a petrol head ever since I was a child, I never thought I'd quite embrace the EV thing so fully." Soaking up all the solar But embrace it he has. In fact, the rail signals and communications engineer has three EVs. Chapman uses power from the solar panels on his roof to charge the cars in the middle of the day. What his solar panels can't charge, he does with dirt-cheap electricity he buys from the grid during daylight hours. "We get ultra cheap power from 9am to 3pm because there's so much excess solar on the grid," he says. "So what we do is we just go hard from nine to three every day. "Whichever one of the three cars needs a charge, I'll just pull that in the garage and then that'll give a bit of a blast." Ideally, Chapman would like to take some of the energy stored in his cars' batteries to power his home in the evening, when his solar panels have stopped producing for the day and buying from the grid costs a relative fortune. Compared with most people, he's lucky — he has a couple of batteries mounted to the wall of his garage to store excess power for the evening periods. But he says that's not always enough. "When it's in the depths of winter and it's when the peak of summer, either we're using the heating or we're using the cooling overnight, that's when we run out of power in the (batteries)," he notes. "What I would really like to do is … draw off of the electric vehicles that have got hundreds of kilowatt hours sitting there." Massive battery on wheels Indeed, the batteries in most EVs are enormous compared with the size of the average household system. Whereas a typical household battery has a capacity of 10 kilowatt hours, many popular EVs have batteries that can hold up to 50kWh, 60kWh, or even 70kWh. It is enough energy, Chapman notes, to run an average household for days at a time. There's just one problem. His car is a Tesla, and it's not designed to pull power back out from the battery. There are many EVs for sale that can feed power out, but currently, the only Tesla that has the hardware to do this is the Cybertruck. There are ways to use third-party equipment to get around this on a Tesla, but Chapman says doing this would void the warranty of a car worth more than $100,000. Tesla currently does not support bidirectional charging. ( ABC News: Daniel Mercer ) "Tesla are very reluctant to have you do that, at least on the cars that they currently sell in Australia," he says. At issue is a little-known technology that some say has big potential — so big, in fact, they believe it could help cut Australia's dependence on fossil fuels. It's called a few different names, including bidirectional charging, two-way charging, vehicle-to-grid and many others. Being able to tap into EV battery storage could fundamentally change — and benefit — the electricity system. ( ABC News: Alex Lim ) Ultimately, it boils down to a simple proposition — not only charging EVs so they can be driven around, but discharging them, too. Ross De Rango used to run energy and infrastructure at the Electric Vehicle Council, an industry body, and now works as a consultant in the sector. De Rango says there's a "big golden pot at the end of the rainbow" if Australia can make bidirectional charging work. "If we have a couple of million cars that are able to export to the grid at peak time … the amount of power that that makes available … will mean that we can do things like close down coal-fired power stations," De Rango says. According to De Rango, the different names ascribed to bidirectional charging reflect the fact it's not a single technology or application, but many. He says the uses range from relatively low value and easy to much more technically difficult but valuable. In its most basic form, he says it amounts to using an EV battery to power appliances and devices — what's known as vehicle-to-load. Vehicle-to-load (V2L) "It's simply using your car to run things like power tools from a power outlet in the car," he explains. This technology, he says, is already broadly available in Australia, and all that's needed is a common extension cord and V2L adaptor fitted to the external charge port if the car does not have a built-in outlet. Vehicle-to-home (V2H) At a higher level, De Rango says EVs have the potential — and the energy — to help run a household through what's known vehicle-to-home. It means using the battery in the car like a household battery. While the car is plugged in, it can either be charged — or charging the house. For one, the EV needs to be designed to pull power back out from the battery. "Lots of electric vehicles in the market have that today," he says. "If what you want to do is run your home from the car without exporting to the grid, then obviously you need that electricity supply to be sized appropriately and the car-maker needs to be happy for you to do that." Bidirectional chargers convert the DC power electric cars run on to AC power used in power outlets, but they don't come cheap, costing several thousand dollars. Using EVs to power homes is still a fledgling technology, De Rango notes, and faces a range of requirements that are imposed on the householder. But he says there is evidence some people are already using it, including during blackouts. Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) Finally, De Rango says there's the biggest potential application of all — so-called vehicle-to-grid technology. As the name suggests, it would involve motorists providing the energy from their cars' batteries to the grid at times when it was needed most — typically during the evening peak. A mix of hardware, software, and regulatory permissions is required to turn the energy from a car battery that's already hooked up to the home into the grid when required. De Rango notes there are about 15 million cars on Australia's roads at the moment. Although only a fraction of these are currently electric, he says this is bound to change markedly in the years ahead. Eventually, he says, there will be millions of them. If they all discharged into the grid at times when renewable sources wind down and gas and coal fill the gap, such as the evening, they could drastically reduce Australia's need for these fuels. Being able to tap into that combined energy storage could fundamentally change — and benefit — the electricity system, De Rango says. "It's going to be a huge step towards enabling us to no longer be burning things in order to produce electricity," he says. Crucially, De Rango argues that motorists will need to be properly rewarded before they agree to use their car's battery to help prop up the grid. Removing roadblocks On that front, he says governments will need to take the reins and corral automakers and poles-and-wires network companies into a position of support. "Government support will make the difference between it being adopted by the early adopters … and it being the case that hundreds of thousands, millions of people can do it in relatively short order," he argues. Electric vehicle expert Ross De Rango. ( ABC News: Ben Knight ) Federal Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen backs bidirectional charging and is calling on car makers to do likewise. The minister says the government is trying to smooth the way for the technology. For example, he says it has approved standards, including for vehicle-to-grid charging. He put sceptical automakers on notice, saying consumers would increasingly vote with their feet. "I certainly encourage car manufacturers to get with the program," Bowen says. "Consumers will want this. "As consumers hear more and more about it, they'll see the advantages. "And increasingly, when consumers go to the car yard or check online to pick their next car, they'll be looking at EV options, and they'll look at which EVs give them the capacity to reverse charge." For his part, De Rango acknowledges the disconnect between the promise of two-way charging and the reality so far. He says it's true some car brands — led by Tesla — are wary of the technology. "It's not so much a technical impediment, it's more a question for Tesla from a corporate standpoint," De Rango says. "I would note that it is reasonable for an individual car maker to set conditions around that. "After all, they are the ones that own the risk of the warranty on these vehicles for a period of time." Tesla, not only a leading electric car brand, also sells household batteries. ( ABC News: Daniel Mercer ) De Rango also notes a growing number of car makers are getting on board and many of those are starting to challenge Tesla's traditional dominance of the EV market. Still, he says the potential benefits of bidirectional charging are too great to squander. "The opportunity is the earlier closure of coal and gas-fired power stations," he says. "The risk of absence of support for this technology is that those benefits will take many more years to materialise." Tesla was contacted for comment. Fremantle EV owner Richard Chapman, for one, is impatient for the change. He personally suspects brands that oppose bidirectional charging will be on the wrong side of a bet with consumers. Richard Chapman sees a future for EVs beyond their traditional use. ( ABC News: Daniel Mercer ) And he describes as "frustrating" the inability to capitalise on the significant amounts of electricity stored in his cars' batteries. Most of the energy that is typically stored in his EVs is generated by renewable sources. Chapman says it would be the same writ large as ever more electric cars soak up excess wind and solar generated by Australia's electricity system. "The key thing that's missing right now is battery storage," Chapman says. "And that is what we have now with EVs. "We've got all this battery storage around, all in our suburbs. "What we need to do is tap into that because we've got all of this solar."
News.com.au
4 hours ago
- News.com.au
Aussie turns down billion-dollar offer from Mark Zuckerberg
An Australian artificial intelligence 'genius' reportedly knocked back a billion-dollar package to defect to Mark Zuckerberg's Meta as part of its aggressive recruitment drive. Perth-raised Andrew Tulloch has established himself as a leader in the AI industry after more than a decade at Facebook's parent company and more recently its competitor OpenAI. In February the University of Sydney graduate co-founded start-up Thinking Machines Lab, alongside former OpenAI chief technology officer Mira Murati, which has a reported value of US$12 billion ($18.5 billion). The Wall Street Journal reports that Mr Zuckerberg this year approached Ms Murati to buy Thinking Machines Lab, and when she refused he attempted to poach its star workers. Sources told the Journal he offered Mr Tulloch a package of US$1 billion ($1.55 billion), which could have been worth even more after bonuses and stocks performance, over six years. Mr Tulloch refused the offer, according to the report, although Meta told the newspaper the figures it cited were 'inaccurate and ridiculous'. The Australian spent 11 years at Facebook's AI arm specialising in machine learning technology after moving to the US in 2012, rising to the role of distinguished engineer. 'He was definitely known as an extreme genius,' Mike Vernal, a former Facebook executive who worked with Mr Tulloch, told the Journal. He then moved to rival OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, in 2023 before branching out with former colleagues to form their start-up in January of this year. Thinkin Machines Lab has a stated mission of making 'AI systems more widely understood, customizable and generally capable'. Ms Murati recently said it was 'building multimodal AI that works with how you naturally interact with the world', but has not yet released its first product. Mr Tulloch was a vice capatain at Christ Church Grammar in Claremont, Western Australia, achieving an ATAR of 99.95 in 2007. In his university days he graduated with first class honours and the university medal in mathematics at Sydney uni in 2011, with the highest GPA in the Faculty of Science. He worked at Goldman Sachs as a quant while studying before completing a masters in mathematical statistics and machine learning at the University of Cambridge. In June, OpenAI boss Sam Altman revealed Meta had offered US$100 million bonuses ($155 million) to his employees in an unsuccessful bid to poach talent for its generative AI teams. Mr Altman also said Mr Zuckerberg's company offered 'giant' annual salaries exceeding US$100 million to OpenAI staffers. 'I'm really happy that at least so far none of our best people have decided to take them up on that,' he said. Meta chief executive Mr Zuckerberg said in January that the firm planned to invest at least US$60 billion ($92 billion) in AI this year, with ambitions to lead in the technology. Its revenue jumped 22 per cent year-on-year to US$47.5 billion ($76.73 billion) in figures released last week, attributed to its AI developments. 'We've had a strong quarter both in terms of our business and community,' Mr Zuckerberg said. 'I'm excited to build personal superintelligence for everyone in the world.'
