Some thoughts

Fuel prices are up....yadda yadda yadda. Not gonna review this since you can probably read tons about it in the internet. I've also sprinkled some thoughts on other blogs.

Although fuel price is going up, it has somewhat stabilized, but still, at a much higher price compared even to the beginning of this year. Moving forward, thinkers, technologists and researchers are trying to come up with solutions that does not include fossil fuels. This would largely be in the 'renewable energy' field. The truth is, solutions are already out there, but the main barrier is the high cost needed to manufacture and apply them.

Currently, power producing systems e.g. coal power plants, hydroelectric plants are centralized. Meaning, plants are 100++ MW and powers up an entire city or state. In the future, it could be that we no longer depend on these huge megawatt plants. A more sustainable system would be an independent power generator for personal use. Some examples are utilizing solar and biomass to power up a home. Amazingly, rural areas in parts of Africa are already moving in this direction. Since to build a whole grid network is far too expensive to reach the rural areas, they utilize solar power instead. Not only is it used to power up the home, it is also used to pump underground water to a storage tank which is used by a whole village.

Maybe this is something that our government needs to look into to ease the burden of the lower income people. Yes, initially costs would be high to install the system. But think about it, they won't have to pay electricity bills ever again!

In Malaysia, Pusat Tenaga Malaysia is organizing a solar system installation initiative. They are offering up to 75% discount on installations. Go to their website to find out more on the SURIA 1000 initiative. A regular double storey house would probably need a 3kW system and this would cost probably about RM22,000 before discount. If your TNB bill is more than RM200 a month, this is definitely something you should consider. Plus, it is also grid connected and you can probably sell back to TNB whatever portion of electricity that you don't utilize. The price I quoted is if you still need energy from the grid when the sun doesn't shine. To be a truly stand-alone system, you would need to install batteries and this would probably incur about 1/3 more of the price without storage batteries.

Another idea to save on cost is for the government to consider a 4 day work week. Cool huh? Washington DC is already doing it (effective July 1). But instead of an 8-hour work day, it'll be 10 hours. Imagine how much money we'll be able to save on that one day we won't have to go to work ($$ from fuel, toll, electricity in offices, water etc). Heh...but if you decide to jalan-jalan and eat out on the extra weekend day, that will be up to you.

Lastly, P*****NAS' name can be seen almost everyday in the newspapers now regarding the hike in fuel and all things related. I hope our wonderful government does not interfere with the company's business. How much more do you expect out of the company. 60% of the company's profits already go to the government in terms of taxes and royalties. And I suspect this money is being put into fuel, food and health subsidies.