guy
Member
hi everyone
very recently i've come across instances of people geetting free photovolatic systems
in one case a retirement where everyone will get them installed for free
i am starting to hear about residential pv systems now but can't find those companies, does anyone know what companies do this???
the idea is that the company just uses the rebate from the government - you pay nothing.
anyone??
Sunshine
Member
Do some google searches..
Be aware though, the cheaper systems use cheaper panels from manufacturers who haven't been making them for very long, so the long term reliability of these is not proven..
They could be a case of you get what you pay for..
Plus you have only until June 30, otherwise the price will go up around $3000 for a smaller system.
DominicGKGilligan
Member
Thanks for this forum
Please refer to my research on exactly this topic, called
Dom
Sunshine
Member
Dominic,
Good article, but the majority of Chinese made panels (except for SunTech), haven't had a very long history of making panels, so I suppose only time will tell if they are reliable.
There are some on-line articles warning about cheap panels failing and causing fire hazards.
I went with Schott brand panels which have been making solar panels for over 40 years, so they may be marginally more expensive, have a proven track record, and an office in Australia, so even if the installer/supplier close down, at least Schott have an office in Sydney which would make warranty claims easier if required.
Do these Chinese manufacturers have offices in Australia? It is good peace of mind for such a considerable investment.
The latest and biggest solar installation in Victoria is under thread.
http://www.theage.com.au/national/solar-project-on-the-skids-20090907-fedb.html
Projected investment $450 million could provide 154MW of power. That is $2700 per kilowatt.
Now please compare that with costs of domestic 1kw solar installation in one household ($15.000? correct me if I am wrong).
In the country that has limited resources to spend on 'renewable' economy is not the strongest attribute. Centralized administration tends to grab all taxpayers’ money and spend in the most inefficient way. In my opinion the key to develop sustainable energy is to let all green technologies to compete free on the real market economy. If there is only ONE FEED IN TARRIF for all green energy, for the same money the growth will be exponential. Main reason will be sustainability of funding and reason for innovating and costs rationalization. If investor want to spend money on micro hydro, geo or wind power, lets them do it, because their return on investment is much better. Do you know that you are not allow to sell your green energy to the grid at same rate if you are micro wind generator owner or micro water turbine, but with solar PV you can? If that is different shade of green? The point I am trying to make is make is that existing regulation in not stimulating progress and development (cheaper energy is regarded as better - but even forbidden to compete on the market).Is it sounds as counterproductive to what we want to achieve here? Regards Greenozi
petanque
Member
If you are serious about sorting out the energy mess should there be no feed in tariff at all?
Polluting energy manufacturers should be forced to clean up the mess they make.
This is likely to increase the price of electricity by how much I have no idea.
Logically if a coal fired PowerStation can be run and produce no pollution it is acceptable. To my knowledge technology to do this does not exist.
After all if renewable have a level playing field this is only fair.
But having an industry that can pollute without penalty regardless if the consequence seems undesirable.
I would agree that government policy should be about achieving something other than jobs for bureaucrats and votes for politicians.
Sunshine
Member
petanque,
If there was no feed-in tariff then it would be a waste of electricity, as solar power systems will then dump excess electricity instead of feeding it into the grid. Customers wouldn't give away power for free!
Power companies are happy to pay a premium for green power during the day, as the wholesale spot price for power during the day is higher than normal anyway.
Also, they make money from it, by onselling green power to retail customers, so everyone wins from it. The power companies and the customers win as well.
Also, less infrastructure upgrades are required as well to cope with hot summer days and high power consumption due to air conditioning, so power companies win again.
So once again they are happy to pay a premium for solar power as it is worthwhile.
Solgen
Member
I am not sure whether power companies do directly benefit from home PV setups. We have one and have had our power authority change the meter to an import/export type but it is a passive device. I don't think it can send a signal to the electricity control centre saying how much we are generating and therefore if the authority doesn't know what we are generating then they can hardly onsell it at a profit. Only when the meter is manually read could they then calculate what we have fed back into the system. By that stage the energy authorities would have finalised their contracts as I understand they are settled daily.
Therefore, the question is: Do power companies actually derive any benefit from home PV?
I would love to know.
Sunshine
Member
Solgen,
Absolutely the power companies benefit from solar PV.
I did a very interesting tour of the Snowy River Hydro scheme a few years ago, and the price of power that power generator sell their power to the power wholesalers/retailers varies alot during the course of the day(price varies in real time).
Snowy Hydro buy their power very cheap at night to pump water from the spillway back up into the dam and sell it by releasing the water and generating power at peak times, in the morning and late afternoons and during the day on hot days when air conditioners are running. Hence Snowy Hydro is a profitable concern even in a bad drought as they are recycling the water from dam to spillway and back up to the dam again, essentially the water storage in the dam is like a big battery. They buy power when it is cheap, then sell when spot price is high.
Power wholesalers/retailers have to pay a high spot price on power in these peak power times. The price differential for off-peak to peak can vary by 1000% or so.
Hence, power produced by solar pv via feed-in is actually relatively cheap compared to the high peak spot price of power.
Sunshine, I allow myself to disagree. Power Company is forced to pay 60c/kwh for PV energy; price for same energy from hydro generator is at range 3-6c/kwh. The solar PV tax credit is about 8 to twenty times the market rate.
http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/02/feed-in-tariffs-support-for-renewable.html
and wind energy is 10 times cleaner then solar PV or hydro, 100x then gas and 200x then coal.
Offered feed in tariff for wind energy on another hand is 10x less than for solar PV.
Commercial wind farm is fully grown, matured technology, solar PV is still in experimental stage. We shouldn't waste more money than is necessary to keep bureaucracy feels good. For small percentage of typical domestic solar PV, whole country could replace light bulbs, install solar water heaters (that is mature technology), install double glazing etc. Solar PV is still fine for international space station due to lack of wind and running water but we are not on the orbit yet. For solar PV to be cost effective radical cost reduction must occur and that will happened since the basic material – silicon – or simply sand is in abundance on the earth. My advice with solar PV is … wait 20 years.
Similar quantum leap in technology happened in auto industry already. To build electric car utilizing lead acid battery was close to impossible; thanks to new Lithium LiFePO4 battery it is reality now.
.
Sunshine
Member
Greenozi,
I have to disagree with your pricing calculations of power.
If you have a look at the pricing tables below, the first link is an example for January 2009, you will see peak power price can go up to $3755 per Mw/h, which translates to $375.5 per kW/h, depending on which state in Australia and which day of the month. This means the power retailers actually lose money in high peak load times, as they are selling power for less than what they buy the power for off the power generating companies.
Hence, as my previous post was about, solar PV feedin tariff power is not that expensive at all, and is a resonable price.
http://www.aemo.org.au/data/avg_price/avgp_daily200901.shtm
http://www.aemo.org.au/data/avg_price/averageprice_main.shtm
As explained at the Snowy Hydro tour I attended, they only generate power at peak load times, when the grid load is required, and spot price is high.
The spot price of hydro is not 3-6c/kWh!
Solgen
Member
Sunshine
I don't disagree with your pricing but the point I was making is that I don't know how
power companies can sell the green power we are generating when they don't know the quantity. If they had had of installed sophisticated metering that transmitted the data then I could understand it but I am sure my meter is pretty basic. Which is understandable as the small amount of power, relatively, that I generate (10kWh on a good day) couldn't justify the cost of intelligent metering.
Many years ago I used to work in the control systems section of the NSW Elect Commission and was closely involved in the operation of the power system and the Snowy in particular and am well aware of the Tumut T3 pump storage setup. Because Snowy only has a relatively small quantity amount of power they only sell it when the price is high ie. at peak times when they can make lots of $$. It certainly is much higher than 3-6c/kWh.
Sunshine
Quoted $3755 is clear anomaly, freak accident and cannot be used for any serious calculation. By doing so we can prove that by buying AAA battery in Coles in order to supply national power grid could be economical. Average peak price range $18 to $70 per MH/h. even so $3755 divided by 1000 (1Megawatt=1000kW not 10) come to $3.75 not $375.5
Reassuming average cost is 2c to 7c per kilowatts on free market and you ask them to pay 60c for solar. That can be done obviously only by limiting such extravagance to not significant numbers solar PV on the market. Quite counterproductive since any real growth in numbers will kill the donation system. This is sort of charity not economy. If you want to buy electricity in this country for 60c/kwh you can bulldozer all power plants and next day come few nuclear ships to our ports to supply whole country with endless energy. How serious we are with solving energy problems? Here is example from overseas. US Department of Energy has given grant to Solar Roadways of Sagle, Idaho to develop photovoltaic panels that can be embedded into roads. Paving entire US road network with solar panel would meet whole country energy needs. That a great idea, everybody would say!! Enclosed budget for such revolutionary project?? $100.000 - yes, one hundred thousand dollars. Are they are serious about paving 5 billion 12’x12’ solar panels using petty cash?
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2009/08/dot-awards-research-contract-to-solar-roadways
Greenozi
Interesting discussion I must say.
Unfortunately we have been extending charity to wealthy multinational corporations to the tune of billions of dollars every year for decades. Whether it be mining or energy related.
Ok so now we've splashed out on a little home based charity by subsidising pv arrays to the very taxpayers that have been forking out those same dollars to big business for decades.
As for overall benefits, pv using existing rooftops in the one of the world's sunniest and driest countries makes sense for lot's of reasons. No moving parts, low maintenance, long life expectancy are a few. Yes other types of renewables are out there and should be encouraged also.
Infighting between those various groups is exactly what's holding back investment in renewables and prolonging government support of polluting power sources. They are not going to pour money into a incoherent rabble that can't get its act together, that's for sure.
More importantly energy efficiency should get greater encouragement. Saving energy costs a lot less than producing it in any form. Next charitable act should focus on that.
Sunshine
Member
Greenozi,
I messed up my calculation, as I went $3755 per MWh times 100 to convert to cents divided by 1000 to convert to kWh then had the output still in dollars instead of cents. Hence, I had $375.50 instead of 375.5 cents ($3.75kW/h)
Either way the principle is still there that power companies are having to pay more for power in peak times.
In Qld the feed-in tariff is 44cents/kWh and Origin are actually paying above that rate by 6c/kWh, paying 50c/kWh. Doesn't sound that they are being "forced" to pay, as they are happy to pay more for solar PV power than the Govt legislated rate.
Even so, this feed-in tariff is limited to the first 8MW/h only.
I suspect future feed-in tariff may go lower as it becomes more main stream and plentiful.
Either way the Federal government are subsidizing by billions of dollars in clean (read dirty) coal technology which won't go online commercially until at best by 2040 (in 31 years)
See article below aired on 4 Corners recently
http://www.energymatters.com.au/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=580&zenid=38377d32ea6a58f2c8267cc9b9573570
If it takes that long for "clean coal" to go online, it will be already obsolete by the time it goes online, as solar, wind and thermal technology would have advanced much further by then, making alternative energy cheaper again.
Reading that article means alternative energies will need to be implemented mass scale, as we can't wait 30 years for the "clean coal" technology to arrive. It will be a case of too little too late.
Either way coal or nuclear fuel is a limited resource, so sooner or later, green power will power ahead (we won't have a choice in the matter).
What's the point of continuing down the nuclear and coal band wagon in the meantime? Implementing clean and sustainable power solutions sooner rather than later is a better option in my opinion.
norbert
Member
As you would probably know Germany started feed in tariffs in the late 90's for the sole purpose of kick starting it's solar industrie,as we all know by now it was a huge sucess.The German government was aware that this would not solve the countries future energy needs but it developed a multi billion dollar export product.
My vision was that Australia due to it's much better location could follow suit and develope it's own solar manufacturing industrie rather then people like myself being forced to but PV components from overseas.As I believe this would be driven by demand and I therfore was pushing for a national gross feed in tariff.Unfortunately our short sighted feds aren't interested,they rather give billions to coal fired generators to keep on chasing the furphy of burring Co2 underground.What an absolute waste of taxpayers money.Feed in tariffs aren't a magic bullet but I strongly believe if taken advantage of it could have helped to make Australia a leading nation in manufacturing PV solar components.This are the kind of jobs we would have needed in this country.
I absolutely agree with you Norbert that our country needs to develop clean industry and manufacturing of solar PV could be one of them. But global economy is driven by $$ factor, and because we have the cheapest coal in the world we have also prominent status of the dirtiest state on the planet per capita. This is still obscured by the fact that we help to pollute by others by exporting enormous amount of coal (in my opinion statistics should be applied to the country that actually dig the coal of the ground not one the burn it. Then the real scale off our disaster will be known. If we cannot beat Chinese in PV production cost due to higher labor cost, I declare to work for free 1 day every month. A few more volunteers and we have the lowest production cost in the world. That is what I call charity with teeth’s.
Greenozi
