But the council eventually shot itself in the foot by rezoning land to the west that has now blocked the originally planned distributor route where there’s dozens of new houses in the Wentworth Estate.

And seemingly delivering a knockout blow, the council sold land back to owners in the south it had acquired for the road.

The present council is now left with no alternative but to rename the southern and western section of the by-pass/ring road/distributor (call it what you like) a feeder.

That’s a secondary road that feeds traffic to a main highway.

The original path of the road is well and truly gone, and the council has no option other than to come up with a plan that’s far from satisfactory using Ploughman’s Lane, over the railway line to Racecourse Road and then Pinnacle Road to join with the southern part at a tight intersection near Lysterfield Road.

People in the Wentworth Estate and the retirement village opposite Wentworth Golf Club will be far from happy about cars and trucks tearing past their front windows.

MAP: Is this the ‘worst intersection in Orange”?

More, how can the section between Forbes Road and Cargo Road be widened without chopping down those poplar trees and moving power lines?

There’ll be a roundabout at the intersection of Cargo Road and Ploughman’s Lane, and it’s anyone’s guess what will be done at the off-aligned intersection of the Northern Distributor Road, Forbes Road and Ploughman’s Lane intersection, presently the worst in Orange.

It’s all going to end in a nightmare for the present councillors to sort out.

SO Bill Shorten wants to introduce a $200-million policy to subsidise the installation of batteries in 100,000 homes so people can store electricity from their solar panels.

His scheme would include a $2000 rebate by 2025 to households that buy the residential power systems, tripling the number of battery installations.

But maybe Bill should be more cautious about lithium-ion batteries. These things can be dangerous and have exploded in electric cars, phones and hover boards.

They go off in a big way with a spray of molten lithium metal and a thick, acrid cloud of choking toxic gases like carbon monoxide, hydrogen fluoride and particulates of oxides of nickel, aluminium, copper, and cobalt according to a Tesla model X emergency response guide.

The resultant fires are very difficult to put out and, in fact, it takes at least 9,000 litres of water to put out a battery fire. Handling the battery or moving it can make it more prone to reigniting.

The Confederation of Australian Motor Sport is trying to come to grips with electric cars competing in speed events because of the difficulty putting out a fire in a crash.

A draft from Standards Australia would have effectively banned lithium-ion battery storage inside homes and garages after declaring it a category 1 fire risk.

That means any home installations would have to be built in a concrete bunker, making it impossible for many homes and costly for others.

And then, of course, is the problem of getting a flat battery after dull days.

That could probably be overcome by backing up the Holden or Ford and hooking up a pair of jumper leads.​