According to supply company the Surge was caused by a programming error in the back-up power station that was supposed toONLY cut in when the Grid Supply was interrupted for longer than 5-10 minutes.
The back-up unit kicked in needlessly and sent a surge through the town frying countless devices including numerous Solar Power Converters fixed to homes with Solar Panels fitted.

@Triphid hmm, I hope it wasn't a planned way to get rid out the competition.

No I'm too far away from the 'normal' bushfire regions of Australia thankfully, but things are very slowly looking up way out here, we've actually had REAL rain falling, though not a great amount of it, in the last couple of weeks, last Wednesday I recorded a whole 3/4 of an inch of rain in my rain gauge and a wek before recorded 1/2 an inch even though the local measuring station only recorded about a tenth of that amount.
Broken Hill has a line of hills that roughly divide the town in half and the Weather Recording station is on the opposite side of town to me, it sounds wierd BUT my side can get rain while the other side gets none or very little and vice versa.

@SanDiegoAirport a biphid is a triphid minus one

LOL, like that one, but according to memory and my medical records I've survived the Grim Reapers attempts 4 times already, 2 were by the skin of my teeth as well.
After surviving the for the fourth time a Doctor told me that, " In his opinion I have more more lives than a herd of Feral cats."

@Triphid welcome back

Many, including myself, of us do. I do not like the small laptops and Ipads and don't get me started on cell phones.

Yep, still have it, don't like laptops, cell phones, etc, etc.

@Triphid I was locked in until 3 years ago when it became too expensive to build and rebuild. I had a laptop at the time also and I recently updated to a newer version and I'm quite happy with it.

@Triphid, @JackPedigo I agree with you on cell phones but the big corporation's plan to have us dependent on the internet for everything is working. I'm fighting as hard as I can but must succumb to certain aspects. I actually don't have room for a PC anymore. I also have a tablet that someone gave me so I use it for small things.

We've named the 'black box' the 6 Million Dollar Box nowadays in honour of the 6 Million Dollars worth of hours we spent on it.
The only few things we couldn't get it do is make coffee, cook a meal, do housework, walk and talk plus a few other minor type things.