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Cue another milestone in your favorite president’s forever war-you’re-not-allowed-to-call-a-war in Iran! The average price of diesel across the country is now $6 a gallon, with no end to the trend in sight.
This is the third time this week diesel has set a record. At least five gas stations in California surpassed $9.999 a gallon for diesel on Thursday, GasBuddy analyst Patrick de Haan tweeted. That’s the maximum price their signs can display. Crude oil futures are now in the $102.48 a barrel to $107.63 a barrel range, according to Reuters.
Nearly everything gets more expensive when diesel does—food, consumer goods, cars, electronics, you name it. According to a Brown University tracker, increased diesel prices alone have cost U.S. households a cumulative $46.61 billion, or around $355. That’s not much less than gasoline, which is $56.42 billion.
“In a span of five months, we’ve seen diesel prices more than double. It has rocked our cash flows,” Oasis Energy’s Alex Ryan told Reuters. “There’s gotta be a tipping point, I just don’t know when or where it’s going to be.”
The ongoing war with Iran and U.S. naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz that Donald Trump kicked off in late February 2026 has put a stranglehold on oil prices. Bob McNally, president of Rapidan Energy Group, recently offered the plausible theory that it’s taken so long for oil prices to rise in part because markets adopted an “optimism bias” that Trump would reach a deal sooner rather than later.
Regular readers already know Crabgrass reads the tealeaves as Trump serving the interests of his fossil fuel 2024 donors, in dragging things out while they profit like bandits, but saying otherwise as his intent being a quick resolution, that, gee, did not happen. Iran's fault, he'd tell you.
It is a best guess from how things have dragged out, and other circumstantial inferences are possible.
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Better than blowing shit up to inflate world oil prices so Trump cronies can make record profits while having the Military Industrial Complex making new munitions on government money to replace munitions used to blow shit up -- instead, do something useful. The Aussies are doing that, but we've got an Asshole in Chief. And it's the old Econ 101 Guns and Butter story which we all know too well.
Australia just switched on its longest-duration grid battery, and it runs on 144 Tesla Megapacks.
RWE’s Limondale battery in New South Wales can discharge for a full eight hours — four times longer than the two-hour batteries that dominate the Australian grid. It’s the first project of its kind in the country.
The battery sits at 50 MW / 400 MWh, near Balranald in the state’s south-west, right next to RWE’s existing Limondale solar farm. It’s now registered and operating on the National Electricity Market after getting its final operational sign-off from grid operator AEMO earlier this year.
Charging twice as fast as it discharges
Limondale is built to charge at roughly 100 MW but discharge at only 50 MW. Most grid batteries charge and discharge at the same rate. This one doesn’t.
That asymmetry is the whole point. The battery can fill up in about four hours — soaking up the midday solar glut when NSW is drowning in cheap renewable power — then stretch that energy back out over eight hours to cover the evening peak and into the night. Charge fast, discharge slow.
It’s a neat answer to the “duck curve” problem that every solar-heavy grid runs into: too much power at noon, not enough at 7 PM. Pairing the battery directly with a solar farm makes the arbitrage even cleaner.
Why 8-hour storage is the new frontier
Australia has plenty of big batteries. What it hasn’t had is long ones.
The first wave of grid storage, including Tesla’s landmark Hornsdale project, was built for fast response and one-to-two hours of duration, great for grid stability, useless for shifting bulk solar into the evening. Four-hour batteries are now becoming the norm. Eight hours is the next step up, and Limondale is the proof of concept.
RWE didn’t build it on spec. Limondale was the only winning bid in NSW’s first long-duration storage tender under the state’s Electricity Infrastructure Roadmap, backed by a Long-Term Energy Service Agreement, essentially a government revenue floor that makes financing a long battery bankable. Two more LTESA-backed 8-hour batteries are moving through the NSW pipeline behind it.
“RWE’s investment decision and signing of supplier contracts for the Limondale BESS project is an exciting step forward,” RWE Renewables Europe & Australia CEO Katja Wünschel said when the project was greenlit. Tesla supplied the Megapacks; Beon Energy Solutions handled the balance of plant.
For Tesla, it’s another flagship win in a market it helped create. The company has been stacking up grid deals worldwide, from a 500 MWh Megapack battery that just went live in Texas to a 1 GWh project in the UK, and its Megapack energy business is now one of its fastest-growing segments.
Electrek’s Take
Two-hour batteries proved storage could stabilize a grid. Eight-hour batteries are what actually let you retire coal, because they can carry solar generation through the entire evening ramp instead of tapping out at dinnertime. [...]
Now, we just need a lot more of them.
Home batteries are quietly changing the economics of residential energy the same way grid batteries are reshaping the wholesale market, and pairing one with rooftop solar is the best way to squeeze the most value out of both. With electricity rates up almost 10% last year and expected to keep climbing, going solar is one of the best ways to protect yourself against rising costs. [...] If you want to find the best deal, check out EnergySage. It’s a free service with hundreds of pre-vetted installers competing for your business, so you save 20 to 30% compared to going it alone. No sales calls until you pick an installer. Get your free quotes here.
Ramsey has recently added solar on unbuildable land adjacent to a closed landfill. The landfill cap is off limits, but the nearby land can carry solar but not structures. Whether it includes battery is not known to Crabgrass. Already Ramsey's co-op power provider offers off peak overnight discounted rates so that hybrid or electric vehicle owners can charge at a discount when existing grid sources and loads in the energy market allow more operating of gen-co resources via the discounted charging operation.
The Aussies are pioneering solar - battery 8hr via this reported item. It seems better than murdering Iranians, sanctioning them because Bibi wants it, and popping Caribbean boats because we can.
Hegseth is Hegseth, Trump is Trump, and the Aussies are plain sensible. Bless them. Palentir is flush enough in earnings and engineering talent that it needs no growth. In fact less is more, in a sense at least the Aussies understand. Blowing shit up is just kind or really stupid. Giving Bibi free stuff to blow up stuff is about the only thing stupider. Trump/Hegseth, both paths, dumb and dumber.
FURTHER: The question of maintaining a standing army, pro or con, was alive at the start of the Republic, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_No._24
The question of how big is too big remains preeminent, especially when maintaining worldwide garrisons leveraged via deficit spending while at the same time giving the rich the tax cuts they lust after and which they buy by buying the politicians we hate and distrust, but suffer because the Constitution gave us what it did, and the Supremes said money talks. That spending it for political purposes is "speech."
Roberts and chhorts went a step furtner saying corporations are people, just like human people entitled to "speak" with the pocletbook. Small wonder after that crap came out that the rich took over and are fucking everyone else.
U.S. Politics 101, as practiced, explained in a single illustration -
Can you say "Schumer?" Can you say "Jeffries?" Need you say more?
Perhaps add "Pelosi?" Surely "Gottheimer."
