Do you have solar panels?

[bellenuit]

bellenuit

http://www.news.com.au/money/cost-o...t-the-carbon-tax/story-fnagkbpv-1226696132724

Well I see that 789 billion Australians are still using Green power although the numbers are going down. Even SA has just under 7.8 billion households, or more than the entire human population of the world, using it. They're not so keen in WA however, with only 56 million customers using it in the West.

Gotta love the quality of News Ltd journalism..... Maybe they should by a calculator to help get things right - a solar powered one of course.

Smurf, if you look closely you will see that the 789 billion figure is actually 789 thousand. It is not a 12 digit figure, but two 6 digit figures separated by a space. Each row, as the heading indicates, shows the number of customers for two different periods and the % change between them. Perhaps you need glasses more than News needs a new calculator

 

[pixel]

http://www.news.com.au/money/cost-o...t-the-carbon-tax/story-fnagkbpv-1226696132724

Well I see that 789 billion Australians are still using Green power although the numbers are going down. Even SA has just under 7.8 billion households, or more than the entire human population of the world, using it. They're not so keen in WA however, with only 56 million customers using it in the West.

Gotta love the quality of News Ltd journalism..... Maybe they should by a calculator to help get things right - a solar powered one of course.

Methinks you misread the numbers, mistaking a space between two numbers (each in the 100,000's) for a comma.
The figures represent customers in 2012-13 vs 2008-09, e.g.

Australia Q3of12-13 ... Q4of08-09 ... Change
Customers 789,062 ... 940,560 ... -16%

PS: bellenuit beat me by a minute

 

[drsmith]

Looking in a local rag, I note 1.5kW systems can be purchased for around $2k. This is relatively unchanged for the past couple of years. The price of bigger systems though has declined considerably over the same period and are now 3kW for ~$4k, 5kW for ~$6.5k and 10kW for ~$12k.

Perhaps the federal government incentives need to be reduced further, in particular for larger systems. Otherwise, one way or another, it's higher fixed charges for all.

http://www.businessspectator.com.au...rkets/solution-barnett’s-unfair-fixed-charges

 

[sptrawler]

Looking in a local rag, I note 1.5kW systems can be purchased for around $2k. This is relatively unchanged for the past couple of years. The price of bigger systems though has declined considerably over the same period and are now 3kW for ~$4k, 5kW for ~$6.5k and 10kW for ~$12k.

Perhaps the federal government incentives need to be reduced further, in particular for larger systems. Otherwise, one way or another, it's higher fixed charges for all.

http://www.businessspectator.com.au...rkets/solution-barnett’s-unfair-fixed-charges

Your post the otther day about the situation in Spain, wasn't so far fetched.

The system was designed for people to cover their own demand, not become private generators, that's the problem when people are greedy.
They stuff it for everyone.

 

[pixel]

Your post the otther day about the situation in Spain, wasn't so far fetched.

The system was designed for people to cover their own demand, not become private generators, that's the problem when people are greedy.
They stuff it for everyone.

Not quite so;
at least in WA, the recent glut of "excess" capacity has eliminated the need for a new - presumably coal-fired - power station. Just to cover peak demand for a growing population would have cost $2Billion - and given the way our Gov'mints manage to stuff things up, probably a Billion more than that.
Instead, they subsidised the initial push into Solar attaining critical mass, which cost less than $200M, and let home owners finance the rest. If you want to call that greedy, by all means do so; but don't expect to be taken seriously.

 

[DB008]

Can't remember (or be bothered to go back over this thread), but IMO, the whole solar thing has been done wrong from the get go.

Big incentives should be given to installation of new systems (or even updates to systems - and even more so to Australian made parts/systems), yet feed in tariff's should be lower.

If someone pays 20c a kWh, feed in should be 22c (that's still 10% diff).

We are a land of plentiful sunshine, why not take advantage of it?

My old man is making a profit (including paying the ambo tax in QLD) for putting in a 3kw solar system, all at the expense of someone who hasn't got a solar system. Crazy.

 

[drsmith]

Further to the article I posted a month ago in the West Australian, The Australian also published an article on fixed costs. This was back in late May.

AUSTRALIA'S one million rooftop solar households could be forced to pay new fixed charges to help recover billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies and make electricity prices fairer for all consumers.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/nat...end-power-divide/story-fn59niix-1226650277855

Either fixed charges are going to rise for all or there will be a new levy for those with solar panels. The only question now is time. The magnitude of the problem can only be managed by managing the uptake of solar panels from this point forward. To that end, the federal government rebates for solar need to be scaled back further. The present level of subsidy is perhaps OK for the first 1.5kW but additional capacity beyond that should perhaps now be fully funded by the household.

 

[sptrawler]

Further to the article I posted a month ago in the West Australian, The Australian also published an article on fixed costs. This was back in late May.



http://www.theaustralian.com.au/nat...end-power-divide/story-fn59niix-1226650277855

Either fixed charges are going to rise for all or there will be a new levy for those with solar panels. The only question now is time. The magnitude of the problem can only be managed by managing the uptake of solar panels from this point forward. To that end, the federal government rebates for solar need to be scaled back further. The present level of subsidy is perhaps OK for the first 1.5kW but additional capacity beyond that should perhaps now be fully funded by the household.

Agree with you doc, oversizing the system is going to cause huge problems.

 

[sptrawler]

Not quite so;
at least in WA, the recent glut of "excess" capacity has eliminated the need for a new - presumably coal-fired - power station. Just to cover peak demand for a growing population would have cost $2Billion - and given the way our Gov'mints manage to stuff things up, probably a Billion more than that.
Instead, they subsidised the initial push into Solar attaining critical mass, which cost less than $200M, and let home owners finance the rest. If you want to call that greedy, by all means do so; but don't expect to be taken seriously.

Someone I know, told me he gets $3000 back per year from Synergy. I don't think that was the plan and I don't think that was the spirit in which the FIT was designed.
As for building more capacity, that will always be required as people still want electricity on cold overcast days.

 

[pixel]

Someone I know, told me he gets $3000 back per year from Synergy. I don't think that was the plan and I don't think that was the spirit in which the FIT was designed.
As for building more capacity, that will always be required as people still want electricity on cold overcast days.

Hi sptrawler,

That's a different angle: As usual, the Government stuffed up big time, by not setting the right parameters.
Initially, the main intention was "Let's get a viable Solar Industry by kick-starting it past the critical mass." But even then, it was clear that peak demand would have to be catered for by expanded production capacity. According to my information, the current plants can supply the base load for quite some time into the future. The Muja expansion was never supposed to run year round 24x7. Only on a few of the hottest summer days would there be peak hours of highest demand, at which power generators had to run their systems at, if not above rated capacity, therefore demanding extortionate unit prices. As it so happens, solar panels will produce very well in sunshine, taking the tip of peak demand when additional air conditioners have to be powered. And that eliminated the need for an additional power station that would have been needed only for those days of peak demand, but still cost $2B-plus.

At $6 per Watt (when we installed our first panels) nobody doing proper sums would have considered SPV without an additional incentive; it would have taken years to recoup a decent payback, and without decent volumes, the Solar Industry would have remained a high-cost niche industry. What the "Planners" failed to plan for was -
a/ at what point was "Critical Mass"?
b/ how much could future State Budgets afford to spend on ongoing subsidies?
c/ where was the balance between many small installations and a quick uptake by entrepreneurs?

There were a few more considerations, but those are the main ones IMO, and not one was properly considered. When the initial uptake - thanks to a generous 40c rebate and dropping costs per Watt - caught the Administration by surprise (with some decent planning, it need never have come to that!) they scrambled and reduced the FIT to 20c. Again, a stupid Policy on the Run - although at that time, at least they set a limit at xxx Megawatt; any additional capacity would have to "use it or lose it" - more precisely: get paid only wholesale 7c for the excess.

I have reservations about your complaint that some "rich" people over-invested and are now "rorting the system" by claiming the FIT, rather than giving many more on lower income the chance. To an extent I can understand where you're coming from. But considering that one key issue was "critical mass quickly", it's a balancing act between a single household stomping up the cash for 12KW or waiting for 8 households to buy 1.5KW each. Who is to say that the household putting up 12KW doesn't have a dozen kids, each with their own TV and games console and other power guzzlers? (I also seem to recall there was a limit of 3 or 5KW, beyond which no FIT was applied. Not sure whether that was actually implemented. I wouldn't have had a problem with that, if it had been. But I don't blame the citizens that took up the offer; rather the idiots that misplanned the scheme.)

 

[sptrawler]

Hi sptrawler,

That's a different angle: As usual, the Government stuffed up big time, by not setting the right parameters.
Initially, the main intention was "Let's get a viable Solar Industry by kick-starting it past the critical mass." But even then, it was clear that peak demand would have to be catered for by expanded production capacity. According to my information, the current plants can supply the base load for quite some time into the future. The Muja expansion was never supposed to run year round 24x7. Only on a few of the hottest summer days would there be peak hours of highest demand, at which power generators had to run their systems at, if not above rated capacity, therefore demanding extortionate unit prices. As it so happens, solar panels will produce very well in sunshine, taking the tip of peak demand when additional air conditioners have to be powered. And that eliminated the need for an additional power station that would have been needed only for those days of peak demand, but still cost $2B-plus.

Muja was not an expansion, it was an overhaul of its oldest and smallest units. Muja has 4 X 60MW and 4 X 200MW units, which, I believe, have been upgraded to 220MW.
The recent upgrade was to refurbish the 4 X 60MW units that were built in the 1960's.

To cover peak demand 2 X 100MW high efficiency gas turbines have been installed at Kwinana Power Station. These can be started and loaded to maximum output within 30 minutes, whereas steam plant can take several hours.
As you say solar panels produce very well in sunshine, but as the evening peak is usually around 4 - 8pm, most solar is well past its peak.
The $2b cost for extra capacity is a furphy. Gas turbines are about $1m/MW and Collie Power Station which has 1X 340MW coal fired unit, was built with provisions for a second unit.

 

[pixel]

Further to the article I posted a month ago in the West Australian, The Australian also published an article on fixed costs. This was back in late May.



http://www.theaustralian.com.au/nat...end-power-divide/story-fn59niix-1226650277855

Either fixed charges are going to rise for all or there will be a new levy for those with solar panels. The only question now is time. The magnitude of the problem can only be managed by managing the uptake of solar panels from this point forward. To that end, the federal government rebates for solar need to be scaled back further. The present level of subsidy is perhaps OK for the first 1.5kW but additional capacity beyond that should perhaps now be fully funded by the household.

hmm - let's see:
A Million households. Shall we say 1.5KW panels on average? Would create about 8GWh per day on average.
That is energy, for which no coal is burned. Energy, for which no new power station needs to be built. Energy that reduces especially peak demand. And if you know how the supply tariffs are calculated - not by actual power delivered, but heavily influenced by the one hour (or day) of peak demand - you get an idea why the power station owners hate SPV.
Without any reliable data on the number of households that claim a FIT, it is impossible to verify those claims of "Billions of taxpayer Dollars". And what about the businesses that installed those Million systems? It took two tradies a day to install our system. That's 2 Million man-days at electrician's wages. They paid income tax, rather than drawing the dole. We paid GST on the hardware, the tradies paid GST and fuel excise on the petrol ...

Those benefits - many still ongoing now that Australia has a vialble SPV industry - compare to what?
The closest data I could find are from WA only, where the budget for 40c FIT is in the order of $50M.
But as I explained earlier, the alternative would be an additional power station at a conservative $2B; at 6% interest, the annual financing costs would exceed the FIT by a big margin. Now, extrapolate that across the Nation, and you know why I'm disgusted by the lack of any semblance of intelligence in our current crop of newspaper hacks: Can't spell; can't count; have no idea of the meaning of "research"; but repeat unquestioningly any cr@p they can copy from equally ignorant bloggers on twitter.

 

[drsmith]

The closest data I could find are from WA only, where the budget for 40c FIT is in the order of $50M.

And the actual cost of that particular part of the scheme is going to be $450m.

One area where the Government has certainly stuffed up big time is by not being quick enough to adjust subsidies in line with the reduction in hardware costs. The above blowout is at least in part a result of that. The cost of larger systems have continued to come down considerably over the past two years whereas smaller systems have been relatively static as the federal solar credit multiple has been wound back for system up to 1.5kW.

If the federal solar credit system is not wound back further in response to the declining cost of panels, we will see a similar type of problem to the above but on a much larger scale. In the end, someone has to pay. If the federal solar credit was cut to the first 1.5kW for any household, that does not in itself limit system size to 1.5kW.

 

[drsmith]

ABC 730 Local (Perth) is going to have a piece on Solar Panels and the fixed component of electricity pricing tonight. It should be interesting viewing in light of the Barnett Government's decision to cut the 40 cent feed in tariff and subsequent backflip.

http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/wa/

Note that the broadcast time is 7:30pm WST (9:30pm EST).

 

[pixel]

ABC 730 Local (Perth) is going to have a piece on Solar Panels and the fixed component of electricity pricing tonight. It should be interesting viewing in light of the Barnett Government's decision to cut the 40 cent feed in tariff and subsequent backflip.

http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/wa/

Note that the broadcast time is 7:30pm WST (9:30pm EST).

Thanks dr.
That line of argument is even more infuriating. It vilifies those of us that did "the right thing" at the time, reducing our carbon footprint and reducing the need for additional power plants - a case clearly proven by the admission that power supply is now exceeding demand. Now it's "unfair" that we use less power and save, compared to those households that refuse to do the right thing.

I remember one discussion when I was accused of siding with "pov" against "posh", along the lines that solar panels were mainly taken up by "pov" suburbs of the mortgage belt, because those people are more inclined to consider saving opportunities. "Posh" suburbs can afford to remain wasteful. Apparently not any more, when the posh crowds are now crying foul that they are charged full price.

We've been asked to pre-pay some of our future power consumption, in exchange for certain contractual cost reductions that made the deal financially viable. What is so difficult to understand about that? If the counter party to that contract had been honest and said "but we might reconsider in a few years' time and penalise you for spending your money now" - who in their right mind would've even taken up the offer?

It's Policy on the Run, clearly influenced by the Power Generation lobby that hates the idea that some households cannot be forced to contribute as much to their profits as they'd like.
What's next? Penalise homes that have been built more energy-efficient? Better insulated?

As far as the infrastructure (powerlines) is concerned, it's been dead wrong IMHO to even privatise the basic network. Maintenance of roads, power lines, gas, water, sewerage pipes ought to remain Commonwealth or State responsibility, funded by taxes and a cost component in the unit price of usage/ consumption. Separate charges for maintenance of the conduit to each dwelling would be open to abuse and inequity.

 

[Smurf1976]

As far as the infrastructure (powerlines) is concerned, it's been dead wrong IMHO to even privatise the basic network. Maintenance of roads, power lines, gas, water, sewerage pipes ought to remain Commonwealth or State responsibility, funded by taxes and a cost component in the unit price of usage/ consumption. Separate charges for maintenance of the conduit to each dwelling would be open to abuse and inequity.

Agreed about privatisation, but the issue of fixed charges is a complex one.

In short, if fixed charges are recovered only through consumption charges then there is a very strong argument that the industry then needs to sell as much electricity as possible so as to remain in business and that means no solar grid-connect whatsoever. As an analogy, solar becomes the equivalent of a pub not only allowing BYO but allowing you to sell your alcohol to other customers whilst standing in the pub. Neither the power industry or the pub would remain in business in that case.

Personally, I'd prefer a situation where all customers just paid the fixed costs of the network as an actual fixed charge, with any concessions being a direct discount off that fixed charge as such. That way, there is no reason why the distributor needs to sell any particular volume of electricity and no need for them to worry about solar or other small scale (or large scale) distributed generation being connected to the system. So long as fixed costs are recovered via consumption charges, the industry needs volume sales of electricity to recover those costs and remain in business. Charging people directly would also put some pressure on network operators to contain costs - something they stopped doing when split off from the generation part of the industry and which has been the primary driver of soaring electricity prices to consumers.

Politically however it is very difficult. It was actually tried in Tasmania in the mid-1990's but suffice to say this was easily the most unpopular thing the Hydro has ever done and it won't be happening again anytime soon. Accepting that public relations disaster (and "disaster" is somewhat of an understatement) the only option was to pursue plan B. And so aggressive marketing of electricity sales was re-commenced - sell as much as possible in order to recover costs and keep unit rates down. Shortly after, the industry was restructured and the network handed to a new operator which, having noted the painful experience with fixed charges, ramped up the volume sales push even harder to an almost ridiculous extent at one point.

The crux of it is that so long as consumption charges are used to recover fixed costs, there will be an ongoing misconception as to the cost of bulk electricity. Literally right now, it's selling (spot rate) for between 3.428 cents per kWh (Tas) to 5.86 cents (SA).

In terms of contract rates, they vary but I will say that in Tasmania the retailer currently pays 7.936 cents /kWh for bulk supply. The new retailers are being offered bulk supply at 7.236 cents / kWh from 1st January next year and 6.331 cents / kWh from 1st July 2014.

The first reduction is a consequence of the effective ending of competition in the generation sector in Tas (Hydro having acquired the only other significant generator, AETV Power) with the second reduction being based on assumed carbon prices after 1st July 2014. The issue with competition in generation is that prices were previously jacked up so as to make it viable for AETV to be in business. With them gone, there is no reason to hold prices artificially high anymore and there has been a substantial cost saving through integration of AETV with the rest of the generation system (ie Hydro only runs the AETV plant when it can actually make money at the lower prices whereas AETV ran it flat out 24/7 - at present it's sitting idle).

Competition in generation is a complex issue. One one hand it does introduce competitive pressure to not overcharge. On the other hand it also directly increases the cost of doing business in the first place. So you end up with everyone having a higher cost of production, but an incentive to not overcharge as such. In contrast, a monopoly generator in a theoretically competitive market has (1) a lower actual cost of production since they can always run the most efficient plant and run it at optimum output levels and (2) an incentive to keep prices low enough to deter anyone else from entering that market. In a smaller market, eg WA or Tas, competition will always be a "forced" thing that won't happen naturally - prices have to be held high enough to support the operation of multiple generation companies.

One of the things to realise is that the industry has become so complex that actually generating power is almost a sideline. There is one generation company, I won't name them but they are well known and not based in Tas, where the business model is basically that of an investment bank. They make money trading financial instruments primarily, the actual generation of power being simply an input into that trading. Their activities are akin to a mining company deciding to trade metals "on paper" and simply feeding in their own mine production to that process when it suits them to do so. The scale of trading activities greatly exceeds the amount of power this company actually generates.

Anyway, I set up the new meter on my solar this evening. I've now got a nice little display sitting on the table which should show the system's output. I'll have to wait for the sun to come up tomorrow to see how it works in practice but in theory all should be well. It's correctly reading 0.000 at the moment.

 

[pixel]

Agreed about privatisation, but the issue of fixed charges is a complex one.

In short, if fixed charges are recovered only through consumption charges then there is a very strong argument that the industry then needs to sell as much electricity as possible so as to remain in business and that means no solar grid-connect whatsoever. As an analogy, solar becomes the equivalent of a pub not only allowing BYO but allowing you to sell your alcohol to other customers whilst standing in the pub. Neither the power industry or the pub would remain in business in that case.

I have no issue with that analogy; and the unwanted consequences of "BYO and selling it to others in the queue" has since been addressed. New installations receive only wholesale (cost of production) prices without FIT.

Only last week, I had to explain the difference to a neighbour. She wanted to install a system that delivered on an average day as much energy as she was likely to consume. Her plan was based on the misconception that she would be credited for every unused daylight unit and could import it at night. It took me an hour to make her understand that she'd be credited 8c per unit exported during the day, but charged 24c for the same unit drawn back at night. Therefore, if she used 6KWh during sunshine and 6KWh at night, her system would have to be laid out to 5KW (based on current conditions) to generate an average 24KWh per day, of which she'd use 6 and export 18. Only then could she re-import the missing 6KWh at 3-times the export credit.
These days, every decent Solar Installer does calculate projected cost savings on the basis of "household uses ALL generated power and exports none." And the 3:1 inequity between draw and feed is the reason for that.

Don't get me wrong: I have no problem with that - for new installations!
What I'm dead-set disgusted about is the fact that the Barnett Government introduces a huge Sovereign Risk issue by vilifying those households that accepted the terms of the contract offered to them for ten years! Of course, there are vested interests gaining momentum, even influencing hare-brained journos at the ABC to jump on the band wagon in support of "those poor non-solar households" who now have to pay higher power bills to fund those greedy over-producing bastards who make their own. We paid 5 times more for our installations than they cost now FFS! In return we were offered future rebates to make the investment decision justifiable! That aside, it affects only a relatively small number of early adopters, who helped the industry along. Meanwhile, every household can reap the benefit of lower installation costs. Properly laid-out SPV systems deliver payback times of 3 to 4 years. It's a no-brainer!

 

[Smurf1976]

Agreed about the issue with contracts. A contract is a contract in my opinion, and as long as it's entered into under normal circumstances (ie nobody was coerced, mislead, drunk etc) then it ought to be upheld unless there is a legitimate escape clause in the original contract and the circumstances to trigger that clause have legitimately arisen (as distinct from anything being artificially manipulated etc).

As for solar, well I have the monitor up and running now and it's sitting next to the computer. It's sitting on about 1400 Watts right now, varying between 500 and 2200 due to small clouds intermittently blocking the sun. In the time if took to type this sentence it has gone back up to 1828, now 1862, now 1805 literally as fast as I could type that. And now it's 1702. The reading updates every 6 seconds.

It's a novelty more than anything else, since I don't actually need the information, but I like this device. Cost about $100 including postage (plus installation which in my case is free using my own labour and a bit of scrap cable I had lying around). The transmitter is mains powered (uses very little power) and installed at the switchboard. The receiver and display runs on 3 x AAA batteries - not sure how long they'll last but I'd expect quite a while and they're cheap enough anyway. Now producing 1179 Watts.

 

[sydboy007]

I was reading an article on Business Spectator a few days ago.

They were offering a solution along the lines of paying a fix charge based on 1kWh of usage during peak periods. At other times the "limit" would not be relevant.

It would be up to customers to decide if they either move into expensive excess charges during peak periods, or they reduce their load so as to avoid the costs.

It might work, though am not sure it's fair to low consumers. Certainly the 1K per annum fixed charge seemed rather high, especially as the unit charging was at 25c. My anual electrcity bill is only arund the 1100-1200 mark.

The problem we have is the forecasts were so wrong that there's a lot of excess capcity in the system now, and we're stuck paying for it.

I'm starting to wonder if a small block of townhouse may be able to go off grid electrcity wise with say solar on all the houses and using a fuel cell with gas to provide electricity when the sun don't shine enough - it could also provide hot water for the houses. Some battery backup for excess production in the day could be added.

These systems tend to not stack up so well for an individual house, but if the costs are shared by say 5 to 10 households, possibly the economics could work out. Certainly you could save by not requiring so much battery backup, and it would probably be easier to design the sollar panels to provide electricity all through the day into the afternoon. Throw in shared rain water storage as another potential money saver, with a shared laundry set up (read something similar is quite popular in the Netherlands) and you can afford to buy a few high efficiency washers rather than everyone buying cheaper ones.

Either we have asset write downs or the death spiral of the electrcity network will come a lot quicker than I think the distributors are ready for.

 

[Smurf1976]

Either we have asset write downs or the death spiral of the electrcity network will come a lot quicker than I think the distributors are ready for.

Too true and network assets last a very long time - there are still transmission lines in service today that were built 75 years ago.

The only real, lasting solution is to take the hit financially and move on. That means write downs either directly or via accepting a lower rate of return on total assets.