Friday 31/7/2009 Page: 21
HOUSEHOLDS with solar panels are being ripped off by electricity companies and the State Government is letting them get away with it, says the man behind Adelaide's solar neighbourhood. Brad Page, of Semaphore, encouraged his neighbours to band together for a good deal on solar panels. Now there are 175 homes in the LeFevre Solar Neighbourhood generating 200kW an hour. Surplus electricity is fed into the grid.The State Government pays 44c/kWh under the Electricity (Feed-in Scheme - Residential Solar Systems) Amendment Act 2008 to reward solar households, but electricity retailers pay next to nothing. Retailers used to pay 16-24c/kWh but now most just pass on the State Government money, plus maybe 5c/kWh. "The Government actually assumed that electricity retailers would do the right thing by their customers and not simply rip them off at the first opportunity," Mr Page said. "The Government was wrong.
They didn't make the legislation as tight as they should have and now they need to act and fix it." A Greens Bill to force energy companies to pay a fair solar feed-in rate passed State Parliament's Upper House earlier this year, but was voted down by Labor in the Lower House. Greens MLC Mark Parnell said Labor consistently blocked action to fix its scheme. "We now call on Mike Rann to do the right thing by solar panel owners and urgently stop households being ripped off by big energy retailers," he said.
A spokesman for Premier Mike Rann said the solar feed-in scheme was due for review after 2 years or when 10MW of small grid-connected solar electricity systems was installed in SA. This trigger had now been reached and the review would commence "in the coming months".
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