Heads-up you ‘climate emergency’ types in Labour Government and HBRC!
In Australia, 1 in 4 houses has a solar power system. As of 31 October 2020 more than 2.59 million rooftop solar power systems have been installed across Australia.
And last October 11, South Australia generated more solar power that the grid’s total electricity demand at the time. That’s a grid serving nearly 1.8 million people!
Here’s what that looks like in chart form.
Where is this solar power coming from? Almost three-quarters – about 1.7 gigawatts – was generated from rooftop solar, not large utility-size installations. This kind of ‘distributed’ power generation – truly power from/to the people – poses major adaptive challenges to grid operators in terms of safety and electricity management over the system, as our local Unison is well aware.
BloombergNEF expects South Australia rooftop solar to reach 2.8 gigawatts by 2030.
Enviable.
I’ve often considered that the Government has missed a trick with power generation over the years – places like Hawke’s Bay with lots of sunlight hours could conceivably generate more than enough power for local use if a large majority of houses has solar installations on their rooves. Insulation has been subsidised in the past with great results – why not similar for solar – I’m no expert (obviously) but I figure an average installation of $5,000 – $10,000 if subsidised by say 30 – 50% would have a large uptake by a large number of households. While initially costly the power generated over time would certainly justify the expenses – and it would be very much cheaper than a new hydro dam somewhere in the country. Seems a win-win solution to me – cheaper power generation; cheaper user costs; less capital costs; environmentally positive.
We lived in Western Australia in the 90’s and nearly everyone had solar hot water – that included commercial buildings as well as residential. Then we moved to South Australia and while there, we left in 2007, there were govt subsidies to retrofit solar panels as well as requiring new builds to have solar roof panels. Prior to that Sth Aust experienced severe power shortages as it was not self sufficient in power generation with some wind farms and some coal fired generators and had to get power from Victoria. In the past decade they have built a huge solar farm as well as roof solar panels.
I believe that Queensland Government subsidizes the roof top installations . I have often wondered why our “Climate Change ” experts have not promulgated the idea in NZ ? Especially in areas such as HB & Nelson. I have priced up a full installation a few years ago and by comparing the high cost of my Grid supply the “payback” timeline was prohibitive. I subsequently purchased a Residence which happened to have a small efficient Solar Hot water system installed, I am impressed with the savings !
As long as the government owns the major electrical generation system we will not see what is the case in Oz. here. I was subsidised in BritishColumbia for solar and also got my electric car less the Provincial and Federal GST. We wont see any Energy minister from any party promote such savings. Soon after I installed 16 panels in Napier Meridian dropped the purchase price of surplus power from 25cents to 8. Interestingly all the other supplier did the same.Unison charges a big fee to connect perhaps our own regional supplier might think of dropping this, but don’t lose sleep on it.