Antinuclear

Lower income suburbs in Victoria taking to solar energy in a big way

Tarneit and neighbouring suburbs Hoppers Crossing and Truganina have more solar power installed than any other postcode in the state – 2564 systems, with a capacity of 5.1 megawatts.
Werribee, just a little further down the Princes Freeway, is second on the list of Victorian solar postcodes. The top five are rounded out by other lower-income, outer-suburban areas: Cranbourne, Caroline Springs and Grovedale in Geelong.

 ”I don’t think the government or public have appreciated just how profound or rapid the change will be in the solar market over the next couple of years.”

Out on the fringe, solar comes of age, The Age, July 28, 2012, Adam Morton UNTIL recently, Tarneit, about 25 kilometres west of the Melbourne CBD, was mostly grazing paddocks, a place without a post
office. Now there is barely a cow left. Between the 2006 and 2011 censuses, the population of the outer suburb boomed, tripling to more than 20,000 as the city sprawled and first home buyers snapped up new affordable housing.

The residents of Tarneit are much like those in other developing areas on the city’s fringe. As you might expect, they earn less than the average Victorian. Perhaps less predictably, they are also much more likely to have solar panels on their roofs.
While the myth of solar panels as a purely upper-middle-class luxury persists, new data released by the Clean Energy Regulator suggests it is misplaced.
Tarneit and neighbouring suburbs Hoppers Crossing and Truganina have more solar power installed than any other postcode in the state – 2564 systems, with a capacity of 5.1 megawatts.
Werribee, just a little further down the Princes Freeway, is second on the list of Victorian solar postcodes. The top five are rounded out by other lower-income, outer-suburban areas: Cranbourne, Caroline Springs and Grovedale in Geelong.
Why has solar gripped some outer suburbs more than the green-leaning
inner-city? Industry experts say solar companies have targeted
mortgage-belt areas with aggressive marketing campaigns, offering
ridiculous discounts for bulk purchases by neighbours. Some developers
have rolled panels into their plans.
But underlying all arguments is the fact that the falling price of
solar technology and skyrocketing cost of electricity have rooftop
panels on the cusp of being competitive with fossil fuel power – with
or without subsidies. This introduces significant ramifications for
the electricity grid and government policy.
An analysis released this week by the Perth-based Sustainable Energy
Association of Australia found that within the next few months one in
10 Australian households will have solar panels.
In 2008, 25 megawatts of solar were connected to the grid across the
country. Now there are about 1700 – a 6700 per cent rise.
Last year it provided about 1 per cent of the energy used. But as Ric
Brazzale, director of consultants Green Energy Markets, puts it, the
country will soon have rooftop solar power with equivalent generation
capacity to Loy Yang A, the largest coal-fired power station in the
Latrobe Valley.
”It’s been happening and people haven’t paid much attention to it,”
Brazzale says. ”The cost dynamics of the industry have changed
dramatically.”…… Sustainable Energy Association of Australia
adviser professor Ray Wills says a threshold has been crossed such
that it now makes more sense to put solar on your roof than to buy
electricity through the grid. ”Our domestic market is well beyond
grid parity. If you are a home owner who is not moving or a long-term
resident, the payback time [time taken to get your investment back
through savings on bills] could be four or five years.”……

While rooftop solar power has broken through the cost barrier, it is a
different story for large-scale solar plants – arrays of photovoltaic
panels in the desert, and thermal power stations that use mirrors to
concentrate solar energy. The Climate Commission is bullish about the
prospects for solar in Victoria, reporting it gets enough usable
energy from the sun to run the state twice over. But large projects
will require significant help to get off the ground through either the
new Australian Renewable Energy Agency or the $10 billion Clean Energy
Finance Corporation.
At a state level, the Baillieu government appears to have walked away
from a pre-election policy of aiming for 5 per cent of the state’s
electricity coming from solar by 2020, but says it has maintained a
pre-existing $50 million grant for a proposed large-scale
demonstration plant near Mildura and would have backed a Mallee solar
park had it won federal funding.
For small-scale solar, the debate at this week’s Clean Energy Week
conference in Sydney was all about moving ahead to the next challenge:
battery storage. John Grimes, chief executive of the Australian Solar
Energy Society, says batteries allowing up to 8 kilowatts of power to
be stored during the day and used in the evening are now within grasp.
Ray Wills highlights existing technology that allows appliances to
communicate to manage household energy use across the day, maximising
solar energy when it peaks in the afternoon.
Grimes admits he has an industry barrow to push, but predicts the pace
of the evolution will surprise people. ”I don’t think the government or public have appreciated just how profound or rapid the change will be in the solar market over the next couple of years.”
http://www.theage.com.au/environment/out-on-the-fringe-solar-comes-of-age-20120727-22zo3.html#ixzz21wxlepnL

July 28, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | solar, Victoria