Tesla’s ‘virtual power plant’ might be second-best to real people power

Researchers talk to Bruny Islanders who have signed up to an experimental new method of managing energy.
Chris Crerar

Hedda Ransan-Cooper, Australian National University; Archie Chapman, University of Sydney; Paul Scott, Australian National University, and Veryan Anastasia Joan Hann, University of Tasmania

The South Australian government and Tesla recently announced a large-scale solar and storage scheme that will distribute solar panels and batteries free of charge to 50,000 households.

This would form what has been dubbed a “virtual power plant”, essentially delivering wholesale energy and service systems. This is just the latest in South Australia’s energetic push to embrace renewables, make energy cheaper and reduce blackout-causing instability.

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Explainer: what can Tesla’s giant South Australian battery achieve?

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The catch is that more than a third of the costs of a power system are in the distribution networks, as are most of the faults. A virtual power plant on its own can’t necessarily solve the problems of costly network management.

The bundling of batteries together to power a network doesn’t consider the needs of either households or the network.

To address these problems, we’re trialling technology in Tasmania that intelligently controls fleets of batteries and other home devices with the aim of making networks more flexible, reliable, and cheaper to operate.

The Bruny Island Battery trial

Part of what we need to transition to a more reliable and cleaner grid is better control of power networks. This will improve operation during normal times, reduce stress during peak times, and remove the need for costly investment over the long term.

For instance, sometimes the network simply needs more energy in one particular location. Perhaps a household doesn’t want the grid to draw power from their battery on a particular day, because it’s cheaper for them to use it themselves. Most models of virtual power plants don’t take these different needs into account.

Bruny Island in Tasmania is the site of a three-year trial, bringing together researchers from the the Australian National University, the University of Sydney, the University of Tasmania, TasNetworks and tech start-up Reposit Power.

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Charging ahead: how Australia is innovating in battery technology

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Thirty-three households have been supplied with “smart battery” systems, charged from solar cells on their roofs, and a “controller” box that sits between the house and the power lines.

Participants are paid when their batteries supply energy to the Bruny Island network, which is sometimes overloaded during peak demand. Their bills will also go down because they’ll be drawing household power from their battery when it is most cost-effective for them.

In a world first, Network-Aware Coordination (NAC) software coordinates individual battery systems. The NAC automatically negotiates battery operations with the household (via the controller box), to decide whether the battery should discharge onto the grid or not.

In these negotiations, computer algorithms request battery assistance at a price that reflects the value to the network. If the price is too low for the household, for example because they are better off storing the energy for their own use later in the day, the controller will make a counter-offer to the network with a higher price.

The negotiation continues until they find a solution that works for the network, at the lowest overall cost.

The NAC-based negotiation is half of the economic equation. Battery owners will also be compensated for their work in supporting the grid. The trial team are working out a payment system that passes on some of the networks’ savings created by avoiding diesel generator use on Bruny Island.

Solving big problems

The problem of co-ordinating Australia’s 1.8 million rooftop solar installations in one of the longest electricity networks in the world is not trivial.

Distributed battery systems, such as in Tesla’s South Australian proposal, represent one possible future. The question that we’re exploring is how to coordinate large numbers of customer-owned batteries to work in the best interests of both the consumer and the network.

The primary feature of virtual power plants, to lump together resources, runs counter to what is required for targeted distribution network support. Nor do virtual power plants necessarily have to act in the best interest of householders.

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Read more:
Meet the new ‘renewable superpowers’: nations that boss the materials used for wind and solar

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In contrast, we’re trialling technology that acts in the financial interests of householders, to earn value from their batteries by providing location-specific services to networks, at a time and price that suits the customer.

As currently conceived, the South Australian scheme may not be the most cost-effective solution to dealing with our evolving electricity system’s needs. The Bruny trial shows a different possible future grid – one which allows people to produce and store energy for themselves, and also share it, reducing pressure on the network and allowing higher penetrations of renewables.

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The Bruny trial is funded by ARENA, and is a collaborative venture lead by The Australian National University, with project partners The University of Sydney, University of Tasmania, battery control software business Reposit Power, and TasNetworks.

Hedda Ransan-Cooper, Research fellow, Australian National University; Archie Chapman, Research Fellow in Smart Grids, University of Sydney; Paul Scott, Research fellow, Australian National University, and Veryan Anastasia Joan Hann, PhD Candidate – Energy Policy Innovation, University of Tasmania

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

A month in, Tesla’s SA battery is surpassing expectations

Dylan McConnell, University of Melbourne

It’s just over one month since the Hornsdale power reserve was officially opened in South Australia. The excitement surrounding the project has generated acres of media interest, both locally and abroad.

The aspect that has generated the most interest is the battery’s rapid response time in smoothing out several major energy outages that have occurred since it was installed.

Following the early success of the SA model, Victoria has also secured an agreement to get its own Tesla battery built near the town of Stawell. Victoria’s government will be tracking the Hornsdale battery’s early performance with interest.

Generation and Consumption

Over the full month of December, the Hornsdale power reserve generated 2.42 gigawatt-hours of energy, and consumed 3.06GWh.

Since there are losses associated with energy storage, it is a net consumer of energy. This is often described in terms of “round trip efficiency”, a measure of the energy out to the energy in. In this case, the round trip efficiency appears to be roughly 80%.

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Further reading: Yes, SA’s battery is a massive battery, but it can do much more besides

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The figure below shows the input and output from the battery over the month. As can be seen, on several occasions the battery has generated as much as 100MW of power, and consumed 70MW of power. The regular operation of battery moves between generating 30MW and consuming 30MW of power.

Generation and consumption of the Hornsdale Power Reserve over the month of December 2018.
Author provided [data from AEMO]

As can be seen, the the generation and consumption pattern is rather “noisy”, and doesn’t really appear to have a pattern at all. This is true even on a daily basis, as can be seen below. This is related to services provided by the battery.

Generation and consumption of the Hornsdale Power Reserve on the 6th of Jan 2018.
Author provided [data from AEMO]

Frequency Control Ancillary Services

There are eight different Frequency Control Ancillary Services (FCAS) markets in the National Electricity Market (NEM). These can be put into two broad categories: contingency services and regulation services.

Contingency services

Contingency services essentially stabilise the system when something unexpected occurs. This are called credible contingencies. The tripping (isolation from the grid) of large generator is one example.

When such unexpected events occur, supply and demand are no longer balanced, and the frequency of the power system moves away from the normal operating range. This happens on a very short timescale. The contingency services ensure that the system is brought back into balance and that the frequency is returned to normal within 5 minutes.

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Read more: Baffled by baseload? Dumbfounded by dispatchables? Here’s a glossary of the energy debate

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In the NEM there are three separate timescales over which these contingency services should be delivered: 6 seconds, 60 seconds, and 5 minutes. As the service may have to increase or decrease the frequency, there is thus a total of six contingency markets (three that raise frequency in the timescales above, and three that reduce it).

This is usually done by rapidly increasing or decreasing output from a generator (or battery in this case), or rapidly reducing or increasing load. This response is triggered at the power station by the change in frequency.

To do this, generators (or loads) have some of their capacity “enabled” in the FCAS market. This essentially means that a proportion of its capacity is set aside, and available to respond if the frequency changes. Providers get paid for for the amount of megawatts they have enabled in the FCAS market.

This is one of the services that the Hornsdale Power Reserve has been providing. The figure below shows how the Hornsdale Power Reserve responded to one incident on power outage, when one of the units at Loy Yang A tripped on December 14, 2017.

The Hornsdale Power Reserve responding to a drop in system frequency.
Author provide [data from AEMO’

Regulation services

The regulation services are a bit different. Similar to the contingency services, they help maintain the frequency in the normal operating range. And like contingency, regulation may have to raise or lower the frequency, and as such there are two regulation markets.

However, unlike contingency services, which essentially wait for an unexpected change in frequency, the response is governed by a control signal, sent from the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO).

In essence, AEMO controls the throttle, monitors the system frequency, and sends a control signal out at a 4-second interval. This control signal alters the output of the generator such that the supply and demand balanced is maintained.

This is one of the main services that the battery has been providing. As can be seen, the output of the battery closely follows the amount of capacity it has enabled in the regulation market.

Output of Horndale Power Reserve compared with enablement in the regulation raise FCAS market.
Author provided [data from AEMO]

More batteries to come

Not to be outdone by it’s neighbouring state, the Victorian government has also recently secured an agreement for its own Tesla battery. This agreement, in conjunction with a wind farm near the town of Stawell, should see a battery providing similar services in Victoria.

This battery may also provide additional benefits to the grid. The project is located in a part of the transmission network that AEMO has indicated may need augmentation in the future. This project might illustrate the benefits the batteries can provide in strengthening the transmission network.

It still early days for the Hornsdale Power Reserve, but it’s clear that it has been busy performing essential services and doing so at impressive speeds. Importantly, it has provided regular frequency control ancillary services – not simply shifting electricity around.

With the costs and need for frequency control service increasing in recent years, the boost to supply through the Hornsdale power reserve is good news for consumers, and a timely addition to Australia’s energy market.

Dylan McConnell, Researcher at the Australian German Climate and Energy College, University of Melbourne

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Want energy storage? Here are 22,000 sites for pumped hydro across Australia

Andrew Blakers, Australian National University; Bin Lu, Australian National University, and Matthew Stocks, Australian National University

The race is on for storage solutions that can help provide secure, reliable electricity supply as more renewables enter Australia’s electricity grid.

With the support of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), we have identified 22,000 potential pumped hydro energy storage (PHES) sites across all states and territories of Australia. PHES can readily be developed to balance the grid with any amount of solar and wind power, all the way up to 100%, as ageing coal-fired power stations close.

Solar photovoltaics (PV) and wind are now the leading two generation technologies in terms of new capacity installed worldwide each year, with coal in third spot (see below). PV and wind are likely to accelerate away from other generation technologies because of their lower cost, large economies of scale, low greenhouse emissions, and the vast availability of sunshine and wind.

New generation capacity installed worldwide in 2016.
ANU/ARENA, Author provided

Although PV and wind are variable energy resources, the approaches to support them to achieve a reliable 100% renewable electricity grid are straightforward:

• Energy storage in the form of pumped hydro energy storage (PHES) and batteries, coupled with demand management; and

• Strong interconnection of the electricity grid between states using high-voltage power lines spanning long distances (in the case of the National Electricity Market, from North Queensland to South Australia). This allows wind and PV generation to access a wide range of weather, climate and demand patterns, greatly reducing the amount of storage needed.

PHES accounts for 97% of energy storage worldwide because it is the cheapest form of large-scale energy storage, with an operational lifetime of 50 years or more. Most existing PHES systems require dams located in river valleys. However, off-river PHES has vast potential.

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Read more: How pushing water uphill can solve our renewable energy issues.

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Off-river PHES requires pairs of modestly sized reservoirs at different altitudes, typically with an area of 10 to 100 hectares. The reservoirs are joined by a pipe with a pump and turbine. Water is pumped uphill when electricity generation is plentiful; then, when generation tails off, electricity can be dispatched on demand by releasing the stored water downhill through the turbine. Off-river PHES typically delivers maximum power for between five and 25 hours, depending on the size of the reservoirs.

Most of the potential PHES sites we have identified in Australia are off-river. All 22,000 of them are outside national parks and urban areas.

https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/fXKQ3/1/

The locations of these sites are shown below. Each site has between 1 gigawatt-hour (GWh) and 300GWh of storage potential. To put this in perspective, our earlier research showed that Australia needs just 450GWh of storage capacity (and 20GW of generation power) spread across a few dozen sites to support a 100% renewable electricity system.

In other words, Australia has so many good sites for PHES that only the best 0.1% of them will be needed. Developers can afford to be choosy with this significant oversupply of sites.

Pumped hydro sites in Australia.
ANU/ARENA, Author provided

Here is a state-by-state breakdown of sites (detailed maps of sites, images and information can be found here):

NSW/ACT: Thousands of sites scattered over the eastern third of the state

Victoria: Thousands of sites scattered over the eastern half of the state

Tasmania: Thousands of sites scattered throughout the state outside national parks

Queensland: Thousands of sites along the Great Dividing Range within 200km of the coast, including hundreds in the vicinity of the many wind and PV farms currently being constructed in the state

South Australia: Moderate number of sites, mostly in the hills east of Port Pirie and Port Augusta

Western Australia: Concentrations of sites in the east Kimberley (around Lake Argyle), the Pilbara and the Southwest; some are near mining sites including Kalgoorlie. Fewer large hills than other states, and so the minimum height difference has been set at 200m rather than 300m.

Northern Territory: Many sites about 300km south-southwest of Darwin; a few sites within 200km of Darwin; many good sites in the vicinity of Alice Springs. Minimum height difference also set at 200m.

The maps below show synthetic Google Earth images for potential upper reservoirs in two site-rich regions (more details on the site search are available here). There are many similarly site-rich regions across Australia. The larger reservoirs shown in each image are of such a scale that only about a dozen of similar size distributed across the populated regions of Australia would be required to stabilise a 100% renewable electricity system.

Araluen Valley near Canberra. At most, one of the sites shown would be developed.
ANU/ARENA, Author provided

Townsville, Queensland. At most, one of the sites shown would be developed.
ANU/ARENA, Author provided

The chart below shows the largest identified off-river PHES site in each state in terms of energy storage potential. Also shown for comparison are the Tesla battery and the solar thermal systems to be installed in South Australia, and the proposed Snowy 2.0 system.

Largest identified off-river PHES sites in each state, together with other storage systems for comparison.
ANU/ARENA, Author provided

The map below shows the location of PHES sites in Queensland together with PV and wind farms currently in an advanced stage of development, as well as the location of the Galilee coal prospect. It is clear that developers of PV and wind farms will be able to find a PHES site close by if needed for grid balancing.

Solar PV (yellow) and wind (green) farms currently in an advanced stage of development in Queensland, together with the Galilee coal prospect (black) and potential PHES sites (blue).
ANU/ARENA, Author provided

Annual water requirements of a PHES-supported 100% renewable electricity grid would be less than one-third that of the current fossil fuel system, because wind and PV do not require cooling water. About 3,600ha of PHES reservoir is required to support a 100% renewable electricity grid for Australia, which is 0.0005% of Australia’s land area, and far smaller than the area of existing water storages.

PHES, batteries and demand management are all likely to have prominent roles as the grid transitions to 50-100% renewable energy. Currently, about 3GW per year of wind and PV are being installed. If this continued until 2030 it would be enough to supply half of Australia’s electricity consumption. If this rate is doubled then Australia will reach 100% renewable electricity in about 2033.

Fast-track development of a few excellent PHES sites can be completed in 2022 to balance the grid when Liddell and other coal-fired power stations close.

Andrew Blakers, Professor of Engineering, Australian National University; Bin Lu, PhD Candidate, Australian National University, and Matthew Stocks, Research Fellow, ANU College of Engineering and Computer Science, Australian National University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Cloud, backup and storage devices: how best to protect your data

How much data do you still store only on your mobile, tablet or laptop?
Shutterstock/Neirfy

Adnene Guabtni, Data61

We are producing more data than ever before, with more than 2.5 quintillion bytes produced every day, according to computer giant IBM. That’s a staggering 2,500,000,000,000 gigabytes of data and it’s growing fast.

We have never been so connected through smart phones, smart watches, laptops and all sorts of wearable technologies inundating today’s marketplace. There were an estimated 6.4 billion connected “things” in 2016, up 30% from the previous year.

We are also continuously sending and receiving data over our networks. This unstoppable growth is unsustainable without some kind of smartness in the way we all produce, store, share and backup data now and in the future.

In the cloud

Cloud services play an essential role in achieving sustainable data management by easing the strain on bandwidth, storage and backup solutions.

But is the cloud paving the way to better backup services or is it rendering backup itself obsolete? And what’s the trade-off in terms of data safety, and how can it be mitigated so you can safely store your data in the cloud?

The cloud is often thought of as an online backup solution that works in the background on your devices to keep your photos and documents, whether personal or work related, backed up on remote servers.

In reality, the cloud has a lot more to offer. It connects people together, helping them store and share data online and even work together online to create data collaboratively.

It also makes your data ubiquitous, so that if you lose your phone or your device fails you simply buy a new one, sign in to your cloud account and voila! – all your data are on your new device in a matter of minutes.

Do you really back up your data?

An important advantage of cloud-based backup services is also the automation and ease of use. With traditional backup solutions, such as using a separate drive, people often discover, a little too late, that they did not back up certain files.

Relying on the user to do backups is risky, so automating it is exactly where cloud backup is making a difference.

Cloud solutions have begun to evolve from online backup services to primary storage services. People are increasingly moving from storing their data on their device’s internal storage (hard drives) to storing them directly in cloud-based repositories such as DropBox, Google Drive and Microsoft’s OneDrive.

Devices such as Google’s Chromebook do not use much local storage to store your data. Instead, they are part of a new trend in which everything you produce or consume on the internet, at work or at home, would come from the cloud and be stored there too.

Recently announced cloud technologies such as Google’s Drive File Stream or Dropbox’s Smart Sync are excellent examples of how cloud storage services are heading in a new direction with less data on the device and a bigger primary storage role for the cloud.

Here is how it works. Instead of keeping local files on your device, placeholder files (sort of empty files) are used, and the actual data are kept in the cloud and downloaded back onto the device only when needed.

Edits to the files are pushed to the cloud so that no local copy is kept on your device. This drastically reduces the risk of data leaks when a device is lost or stolen.

So if your entire workspace is in the cloud, is backup no longer needed?

No. In fact, backup is more relevant than ever, as disasters can strike cloud providers themselves, with hacking and ransomware affecting cloud storage too.

Backup has always had the purpose of reducing risks using redundancy, by duplicating data across multiple locations. The same can apply to cloud storage which can be duplicated across multiple cloud locations or multiple cloud service providers.

Privacy matters

Yet beyond the disruption of the backup market, the number-one concern about the use of cloud services for storing user data is privacy.

Data privacy is strategically important, particularly when customer data are involved. Many privacy-related problems can happen when using the cloud.

There are concerns about the processes used by cloud providers for privacy management, which often trade privacy for convenience. There are also concerns about the technologies put in place by cloud providers to overcome privacy related issues, which are often not effective.

When it comes to technology, encryption tools protecting your sensitive data have actually been around for a long time.

Encryption works by scrambling your data with a very large digital number (called a key) that you keep secret so that only you can decrypt the data. Nobody else can decode your data without that key.

Using encryption tools to encrypt your data with your own key before transferring it into the cloud is a sensible thing to do. Some cloud service providers are now offering this option and letting you choose your own key.

Share vs encryption

But if you store data in the cloud for the purpose of sharing it with others – and that’s often the precise reason that users choose to use cloud storage – then you might require a process to distribute encryption keys to multiple participants.

This is where the hassle can start. People you share data with would need to get the key too, in some way or another. Once you share that key, how would you revoke it later on? How would you prevent it from being re-shared without your consent?

More importantly, how would you keep using the collaboration features offered by cloud providers, such as Google Docs, while working on encrypted files?

These are the key challenges ahead for cloud users and providers. Solutions to those challenges would truly be game-changing.

Adnene Guabtni, Senior Research Scientist/Engineer, Data61

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

With battery storage to the rescue, the Kodak moment for renewables has finally arrived

Kevin's Walk on the Wild Side

AAP/Lukas Coch

David Holmes, Monash University

Who would have thought that, scarcely five weeks after Treasurer Scott Morrison, paraded a chunk of coal in parliament, planning for Australia’s energy needs would be dominated by renewables, batteries and hydro?

For months now, the Coalition has been talking down renewables, blaming them for power failures, blackouts, and an unreliable energy network.

South Australia was bearing the brunt of this campaign. The state that couldn’t keep its lights on had Coalition politicians and mainstream journalists vexatiously attributing the blame to its high density of renewables.

But this sustained campaign, which would eventually hail “clean coal” as Australia’s salvation, all came unstuck when tech entrepreneur Elon Musk came out with a brilliant stunt: to install a massive battery storage system in South Australia “in 100 days, or it’s free”.

The genius of the stunt was not to win an instant contract to…

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Check your Google security settings, receive 2GB of free Drive storage

Gigaom

Here’s an easy way to get 2GB of Google Drive storage: In the next week, head to Google’s security checkup page and follow the instructions. On February 28, Google will credit your account with the additional cloud storage space. The security checkup takes less than 5 minutes to complete, and it’s simple — it asks you what your backup email address is, whether any recent account activity is odd, and to review the various apps you’ve given Google account permissions to (there are probably a lot.) Sure, 2GB of additional Google Drive space isn’t a ton (you get 15GB for free), but you probably should review your security settings anyway.

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Christians Decry Malaysia’s Detention of Bible Books

After stopping 5,100 Bibles in 2009, authorities withhold 30,000 Malay-language copies.

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, March 14 (CDN) — The detaining of 30,000 copies of the New Testament, Psalms and Proverbs in the Malay language at Malaysia’s Kuching Port has “greatly disillusioned” the nation’s Christian community.

The books, imported from Indonesia by the local branch of Gideons International for distribution in schools, churches and longhouses in Betong, Saratok and other Christian areas in Sarawak state, have been detained at the Kuching Port since January.

Authorities told an unnamed officer of the importer on Jan. 12 that he could not distribute the books in Sarawak state, on the island of Borneo, since they “contained words which are also found in the Quran,” according to online news agency Malaysiakini. The officer was ordered to transport the books to the Home Ministry’s office for storage.

Last week, when the same officer enquired of the Home Ministry officials on the status of the Malay Bibles, authorities said they had yet to receive instructions on the matter.

This is not the first time government authorities have detained Malay-language Bibles, and Bishop Ng Moon Hing, chairman of Christian Federation of Malaysia, decried the action.

“The CFM is greatly disillusioned, fed-up and angered by the repeated detention of Bibles written in our national language,” Ng said. “It would appear as if the authorities are waging a continuous, surreptitious and systematic program against Christians in Malaysia to deny them access to the Bible in [Malay].”

An earlier consignment of 5,100 copies of the Good News Bible in Malay, imported by the Bible Society of Malaysia, was detained in Port Klang in March 2009. Together with this latest seizure, the total number of Bibles seized and remaining in possession of the Home Ministry amounts to 35,100 copies.

The CFM, representing a majority of Christians in Malaysia, released a statement on March 10 asserting, “All attempts to import the Bible in Bahasa Malaysia [Malay], i.e. the Alkitab, whether through Port Klang or the Port of Kuching, have been thwarted” since March 2009.

Prior to March 2009, there had been several such incidents, and “each time, tedious steps had to be taken to secure their release,” according to the CFM.

A significant 64 percent of Malaysian Christians are indigenous people from Sabah and Sarawak states who use the Malay language in their daily life. Christian leaders say having Bibles in the Malay language is crucial to the practice of their Christian faith.

Christians make up more than 9 percent of Malaysia’s nearly 28 million people, according to Operation World.

This latest Bible book seizure has irked Christians and drawn criticisms from politicians spanning both sides of the political divide.

The Sarawak Ministers Fellowship issued a statement registering its “strong protest,” describing the detention of the books as “unconstitutional” and in violation of the 18-point agreement for Sarawak in the formation of Malaysia.

Representing the opposition political party, People’s Justice Party (Sarawak Parti Keadilan Rakyat) Chief Baru Bian described the withholding as “religious harassment” and “a blatant disregard of our constitutional right as Christians in Malaysia.”

Chua Soi Lek, president of the Malaysian Chinese Association, a political party within the ruling coalition National Front, proposed that Malay Bibles be allowed to be printed locally. The deputy chief minister of Sarawak, Dr. George Chan, expressed the state government’s willingness to publish the Malay Bible locally.

Home Minister Hishammuddin Hussein was quoted in The Star newspaper today as saying, “The issue … is being resolved amicably with the parties concerned,” though how this was taking place was not apparent. The home minister has reportedly said the books had been withheld pending an appeal over the use of the word “Allah” in The Herald catholic newspaper.

Secretary-General of Malaysian Muslim Youth Movement Mohamad Raimi Abdul Rahim has called for the government to enforce the ban on use of the word “Allah” by non-Muslims nationwide, including in Sabah and Sarawak.

In a controversial court ruling on Dec. 31, 2009, Judge Lau Bee Lan had allowed The Herald to use the word “Allah” for God in the Malay section of its multilingual newspaper. The Home Ministry filed an appeal against the decision on Jan. 4, 2010, but to date there is no indication as to when the case will be heard.

Report from Compass Direct News

Massive Dust Storm

I was moving all of my gear out of storage today and found myself immersed in dust and in the midst of a howling gale. It was ferocious to say the least.

The video below is vision of the storm system hitting Broken Hill in the east of New South Wales.

 

And the footage below is what it was like near where I live. The footage does not show how strong the gale was at its peak.

 

OUT OF STORAGE

It should only be a very short time now until all of my property is out of storage and back with me under the one roof – in my own apartment (rental). After more than two years I will soon have everything back out of storage and fully accessible again. This will mean many things, the least of which is not a renewed ability to get at all of my family history research, tools, etc. I’ve been waiting for this for so long.

So the countdown is now on and I should be able to access everything again within 5 to 6 weeks. So not that long to wait now. All of the projects that have been on hold can be back up and running again very soon.

SRI LANKA: RASH OF ATTACKS ON CHRISTIANS REPORTED

Assaults by local mobs, including Buddhist monks, surge.

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, August 17 (Compass Direct News) – Attacks on Christians in Sri Lanka have surged noticeably in recent weeks, following the government’s defeat of Tamil separatists in May.

Attacks were reported in Puttlam, Gampaha and Kurunegala districts in western Sri Lanka, central Polonnaruwa district, Mannar district in the north and Matara district in the south, according to the National Christian Evangelical Alliance of Sri Lanka (NCEASL).

Most recently, attackers on July 28 set fire to an Assemblies of God church in Norachcholai, Puttlam district, destroying the building. The pastor received frantic calls from neighbors at about 8:45 p.m. reporting that the building was in flames, echoing a similar arson attack almost a year ago that destroyed the original building on the site.

Church members have registered a complaint with police, but at press time no arrests had been made.

When a pastor of a Foursquare Gospel church and his wife visited a church member in Radawana village, Gampaha district during the third week of July, a 50-strong mob gathered at the door and shouted that they would not tolerate any further Christian activity in the village, NCEASL reported. The mob then prevented the couple from leaving the house, hit the pastor with a rod and threw a bucket of cow dung at him.

The disturbance continued for two hours before police finally answered repeated requests for assistance and arrived at the house, arresting three people who were later released.

Earlier, on June 28, a mob consisting of more than 100 people, including Buddhist monks, surrounded the home of a female pastor of another Foursquare Gospel church in the village, according to the NCEASL. At the time the pastor, whose name was withheld for security reasons, and her husband were away. Their 13-year-old daughter watched helplessly as the mob broke in, shouted insults and destroyed chairs and other furniture.

Hearing that their home was under attack, the parents rushed to get police help, but the mob had dispersed by the time officers arrived. Police called the pastor into the Gampaha police station for questioning on July 9 and July 11; on the second occasion, protestors surrounded her and other pastors who accompanied her, spitting on them and initially preventing them from entering the police station.

Later, in the presence of Buddhist monks and other protestors, the pastor was forced to sign a document promising not to host worship services for non-family members.

Also in Gampaha district, a mob on July 14 destroyed the partially-built home of Sanjana Kumara, a Christian resident of Obawatte village. On receiving a phone call from a friend, Kumara rushed to the scene to find the supporting pillars of the house pulled down, damaging the structure beyond repair.

Villagers launched a smear campaign against Kumara on July 6, after he invited his pastor and other Christians to bless the construction of his home. As the group prayed, about 30 people entered the premises and demanded that they stop worshiping. The mob then threatened to kill Kumara, falsely accusing him of constructing a church building.

On July 8, Kumara discovered that unknown persons had broken into a storage shed on the property, stealing tools and painting a Buddhist blessing on the walls. Police were reluctant to record Kumara’s complaint until a lawyer intervened.

The Sri Lanka population is 69.1 percent Buddhist, 7.6 percent Muslim, 7.1 percent Hindu and 6.2 percent Christian, with the remaining 10 percent unspecified.

Sword Attack

In Markandura village, Kurunegala district, seven men wielding swords on July 12 attacked caretaker Akila Dias and three other members of the Vineyard Community church, causing serious injury to church members and church property. Dias and others received emergency care at a local hospital before being transferred to a larger hospital in the area for treatment.

Church members filed a complaint with police, identifying one of the attackers as the same man who had assaulted the church pastor and another worker with a machete in March; at that time police had arrested the man but released him on bail. Several other attacks followed, including one on June 29 in which the church premises were desecrated with human feces. Documents were also circulated on July 18 describing the church as a divisive force aiming to destroy peace in the local community.

On the night of July 12, attackers tore off roof tiles from the church building and threw them to the ground, leaving it exposed to the elements.

On July 5, a mob of around 100 people, half of them Buddhist monks, forcibly entered an Assemblies of God church in Dickwella, Matara district, warning church members to cease all Christian worship in the area and pasting notices on the walls declaring that “any form of Christian worship in this place is completely prohibited.”

The congregation has filed a complaint with local police.

On June 23, a Foursquare Gospel pastor from Polonnaruwa district was stopped by a group of men riding motorcycles as he drove home after attending a late evening prayer meeting. Three men wearing masks attacked him with knives and shouted, “This is your last day! If we let you live, you will convert the whole town!”

The pastor sustained severe cuts to his arms as he warded off blows aimed at his neck, before driving away to seek medical help. Police in Polonnaruwa have initiated an inquiry.

Finally, in Thalvapadu village, Mannar district, members of an Apostolic church were dedicating their newly constructed building on June 7 when a mob of about 300 people forcibly entered the premises, threatening the pastor and congregation. They demolished the new church building, throwing roofing sheets and bricks onto a plot of adjacent land.

When church members filed a complaint, police arrested seven of the attackers; a case has been filed with a local court.

Report from Compass Direct News