Get paid for solar power on your roof

Sydney Morning Herald
Monday 24/11/2008 Page: 3

HOUSEHOLDERS who put solar panels on their roofs and generate power that feeds back into the electricity grid will be paid a fee, but how much will not be decided until January. The move to introduce the "feed-in tariff" will be announced today by the NSW Minister for Environment and Climate Change, Carmel Tebbutt, at a solar energy conference in Sydney.

It marks an end to the State Government's opposition to the solar subsidies. The Energy Minister, Ian Macdonald, is backing it despite strong objections from one of the state's main energy retailers, EnergyAustralia. NSW is the last state to introduce the solar subsidy or feed-in tariff.

"We know the community want to act on climate change and this is one way the NSW Government can support people who want cleaner, greener energy," Ms Tebbutt told the Herald. 'A feed-in tariff makes solar panels more affordable because people are paid for the clean electricity they produce." But the minister and a state taskforce on the tariff, which will report in January, will face intense lobbying from the solar industry, which does not want NSW to follow the example of Victoria, South Australia and Queensland. Those states have announced only a minimal solar feed-in tariff that leaves most solar households with little or no fee after they pay their own electricity bills.

"We're pleased that NSW is looking at a feed-in tariff," said Muriel Watt, who chairs the main solar panel industry group. But Dr Watt said NSW should introduce a "gross" feed-in tariff where power companies pay households for all the electricity they generate, including their own, at a premium rate. The household would then be billed at the normal rate for their own power use. This would be an incentive to people who invest in solar panels to feed into to the electricity grid.

Dr Watt said states like Victoria paying "net" feed-in tariffs provided little incentive for households to install solar panels. "With normal electricity use on a normal [solar panel] system you're not going to earn anything, so it won't be driving any change much," she said. The debate over the feed-in tariff has been fraught in Australia.

Only two state governments, Western Australia and the ACT, are committed to the more generous "gross" feed-in tariff. A recent Senate inquiry heard evidence from the industry, here and overseas, that a "gross" tariff paid to businesses as well as households had proved successful in massively expanding solar energy in Germany and Spain. "We'll await the advice from the taskforce," Ms Tebbutt said. "It's got to be a fair and reasonable tariff for people who do return electricity to the grid and it shouldn't place a disproportionate burden on all electricity consumers".

The head of the International Energy Agency, Nobuo Tanaka, arrived in Australia yesterday to address the Clean Energy Council on the need for an "energy revolution" to prevent global greenhouse gas emissions triggering a rise in the world's temperature of 6 degrees by the end of the century.

"I think everyone thinks a 6-degree rise is not sustainable," Mr Tanaka told the Herald. "The issue is how we can achieve emissions reductions somehow without causing economic growth to slowdown." Mr Tanaka said to keep the temperature from rising above 2 degrees, which scientists say would avoid dangerous climate change, renewable energy, including hydro power, would have to rise to 40 per cent of all energy used by 2030. "It's possible, but very costly, very difficult and challenging."