Solar power proving a good investment for Western Australians
Solar Helps Delay New Power Station In Western Australia http://www.energymatters.com.au/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=4319 26 May 14, WA’s solar households and businesses are collectively generating as much power as a major traditional power station. According to The West Australian’s Daniel Mercer, given forecasts from Synergy of a continuing increase in solar uptake, the State Government now says a new power station would not need to be constructed in the state until 2029.
Synergy predicts there could be as much as 1500MW of solar capacity feeding into Western Australia’s electricity grid by 2020.
The rate that Western Australians have embraced solar is quite stunning. The numbers of solar power systems connected to the grid has grown from just three in June 2007 to 135,419 (Synergy customers) as of March 2014.
According to solar provider Energy Matters, a 5kW solar panel system installed in Perth can return a financial benefit of between $1,577 and $2,196 annually. In some cases, a system of this size can basically blow away an average household’s power bills.
Energy Matters’ Australian Solar Index estimates the internal rate of return of a system installed in Perth to be 17.8%; making it one of the best investments around.
However, as is the case in the rest of Australia, clouds are gathering on the horizon for WA’s solar industry and potential new solar households. The Renewable Energy Target review is currently under way and concerns have been expressed regarding possible outcomes; including a gutting of subsidies.
Current support for acquiring systems can translate to thousands of dollars off the cost of going solar. The uncertainty surrounding the review means the best time to go solar in Western Australia could be right now.
Going solar in WA doesn’t necessarily mean a significant up-front financial outlay. Energy Matters offers a zero-deposit “Save As You Go” arrangement to eligible customers where monthly repayments can be less than what would otherwise be spent on mains-grid supplied electricity.
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of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
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Removing the up-front costs of household solar is the best thing that has happened for a very long time. In my opinion it should have happened a very long time ago, before the Renewable Energy Target (RET) originated and before privatisation of electricity utilities. It may sound like a new idea but it has been around for at least 20 years.
The idea was put forward in various forms through the SA Branch of the Solar Energy Society (ANZSES), Flinders Uni, the Conservation Council (CCSA), and the SA Greens One example may be found in “A Renewable Energy Authority for South Australia” (Dennis Matthews, in Towards Ecological Sustainability, Ed by Nena Bierbaum, Flinders University, Flinders Press, 1991).
If it had been implemented before the RET then we could have avoided the charge that the RET is a cross subsidy of the well-off by the less well-off, and solar electricity would have been more orderly process rather then the stop-start, boom and bust, that we are now experiencing.
It’s been a long time coming, but better late than never.
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Thanks for the update and your comments, Dennis. Long time no see you!
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