A few weeks ago Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen joined a group of local and federal politicians at the end of my street in Dickson to unveil a large metal box.

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This tall, colourfully painted shipping container-like cube houses a solar battery, which apparently soaks up the excess electricity from the photovoltaic panels on my roof (and those of my neighbours) a few hundred metres away. While I confess I don't entirely understand the details, it then uses that excess electricity at optimal times to supply some of the neighbourhood with green power and to balance out demand. It's one of three medium-sized neighbourhood batteries planned for the ACT (and one of 400 nationally).

It's a fine thing, in theory, and makes a lot more sense to me than everyone having their own battery in the garage.

As the Prime Minister dashed off to shore up our major oil and fuel supplies this week, I was thinking about how that colourful box provides a useful example of the dual pressures facing Australia at this moment. How do we provide immediate relief as prices spike from a war we had nothing to do with? And how do we at the same time protect ourselves from the next, inevitable, international energy shock?

There's no doubt Canberrans are feeling the real financial impact of this war. An eye-watering spike in petrol and diesel prices is now morphing into additional costs on other essentials beyond travel.

Public transport numbers are surging and as Petlee Peter and Ray Athwal reported this week, businesses can only absorb massive increases to their input costs for so long........

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