Record numbers applying for solar rebate
Households across New South Wales are taking to solar energy in record numbers.
The Clean Energy Council figures show 800 solar panels were installed last year compared with about 300 in 2006.
The Federal Government received an average of 120 applications for its solar rebate last year but it is now getting about 1,000 each week.
The council’s Andrea Gaffney says the numbers of residential solar kits keeps increasing.
“Between January and September of this year we’ve seen more than 1000 installations go in in New South Wales, so a significant increase in uptake in that particular market, which is extremely encouraging,” she said.
Source: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/10/31/2406954.htm
Housing industry backs calls for new QLD solar scheme
Queensland’s Housing Industry Association (HIA) has backed calls from the solar industry, conservation groups and the State Opposition for a better domestic solar energy scheme.
The HIA would support the introduction of a gross feed-in tarrif scheme for people installing solar energy systems instead of the current net tarrif model.
Latest figures show Queensland’s solar uptake is comparatively poor to other states – one unit per 2112 people, better only than Western Australia, where there is one unit per 3804 people.
Even Tasmania, with one unit per 1548 people, has a better adoption rate than the Sunshine State.
In the eight years to June 2008, just 1956 solar energy systems had been installed in Queensland, despite the $8000 national solar energy rebate.
State Energy Minister Geoff Wilson said a further 350 homes have taken up the State Government’s solar rebate scheme, which sees customers paid 44 cents per kilowatt hour for the extra electricity they produce after providing energy for their own home.
In its publicity material, the State Government estimates: “The average consumer operating a 1 kilowatt solar system could save up to 25 per cent on their electricity bill by using electricity generated by the PV system and from payments received from the Solar Bonus Scheme.”
The HIA rejects this claim, with executive director Warwick Temby arguing a gross feed-in tariff scheme would offer the required incentive to make the switch.
“With a one kilowatt system on a net feed-in basis you will never get anything back. You will never make enough to generate back to the grid,” Mr Temby said.
“Perhaps if you turn everything off and go away on holidays you may well get to that point.”
Mr Temby said the net solar feed-in tariff did little to persuade developers to install solar energy options during construction.
He said industry would back a scheme “if there was a market for it” and where it made “good economic sense”.
Shifting to a gross feed-in scheme would make it solar energy more viable, he said.
“It would certainly improve the outcome – I don’t know what it would mean in terms of the payback period – but it would be significant.
“It would significantly change the economic make-up of the whole thing and make it significantly more attractive for people to make that upfront capital injection into their house.”
All new homes should have ‘solar’ option: LNP
All new homes in Queensland should have the option of a roof-top solar energy system covered by a gross feed-in tariff, the Liberal National Party has said.
The LNP’s climate change spokesman, David Gibson, called on the State Government to adopt a gross feed-in tariff and reject its current net feed-in tariff, which pays a rebate to people with solar panels only if they produce enough energy to put electricity back into Queensland’s grid.
This follows figures showing the Sunshine State has one of Australia’s lowest take-up rates for solar technology.
The ACT in July announced it would start a gross feed-in tariff, paying people adopting a domestic solar energy system three times the retail price of electricity.
In August, the then Labor government in Western Australia announced it would shift to a gross feed-in tariff, prior to it losing the election.
The Clean Energy Council in June this year also backed calls for a gross feed-in tariff, calling for the system to be introduced Australia-wide by July 2009.
Mr Gibson called for a bold approach to encourage solar energy to shift from being a fringe solution to a mainstream source of energy.
“Under a LNP policy … we would see new homes being built with solar PV (photovoltaic),” Mr Gibson said.
“You would adopt it right from the start. We don’t see that, because there is no incentive.”
He accepted it would be more expensive for governments, but said the costs could be offset by delaying extra transmission infrastructure.
The State Government said 350 consumers had taken up the new Queensland solar rebate scheme since July, but Mr Gibson believes most of these people are “committed conservationists”.
Mr Gibson said Australia was falling behind the rest of the world in offering incentives to people to adopt solar technology.
“We have got to make renewable energy no longer a fringe policy area,” Mr Gibson said. “It has got to become mainstream.”
He said solar hot water systems had proved popular.
“We were really cutting edge on solar hot water systems,” he said.
“Solar hot water systems became new and suddenly you saw them on houses in your suburb because they went from being fringe to mainstream. Now we need to be having solar PV become mainstream.”
Solar PV units generate electricity for dometic use from panels mounted on the roof, store energy in batteries and then return electricity to the grid. They last up to 30 years.
Prominent conservation groups including The Wilderness Society, WWF Australia and the Queensland Conservation Council recently released a review of State Government environmental policies and backed the LNP’s calls for a gross tarrif scheme.
The State Government is now trialling a major solar energy project on Magnetic Island, spending $15 million to reduce carbon emissions by 50,000 tonnes over seven years.
It has set up a solar farm at Windorah to produce the town’s daytime electricity.