Yes, your neighbour's claim is basically true. The rebates and feed in tariff are borne by the electricity producers, and therefore are ultimately paid for by all electricity users. Of course, rises in electricity prices are also caused by inflation, and by the need to maintain and upgrade the grid, which it seems has been neglected to save money in the short term.
Any way you look at it though, the true cost of your 1.5kW system is much higher than what you paid, and the cost of electricity is less than whatever you are paid for the power you produce. In other words, renewable energy produced from rooftop solar installations is substantially more expensive to produce than in a power station. Provided the number of rooftop installations remains small, then resultant electricity price inreases will remain negligible, but of course so too will the amount of renewable power generated. I'll stick my neck out, and say that the voting public would not accept the hefty increase in power bills that would result from a majority of people (say >40%) installing rooftop PV with the present rebates and feed in tariffs, as would be required to make a significant contribution to renewable energy production.
If (like me) you don't approve of burning large quantities of filthy brown coal to generate electricity, then PV generated power is a good thing, and we have to accept that the cost is higher.
I rather doubt that rooftop PV is the most cost effective way to produce renewable energy, but something (within limits, even an expensive something) is better than nothing.
Commercial scale wind power appears to be more cost effective than solar PV, and large scale PV farms are probably more cost effective than home rooftop PV. An exception might be enthusiasts (like many here) who may care less about cost, and who are happy to maintain and optimize their system by regularly cleaning the panels, regularly check output and repair the system if something fails, etc.
Unfortunately, at the present time neither wind power nor PV can reliably produce baseload power, so we still need our power stations. More than that, because PV power disappears when the sun doesn't shine, it does not significantly reduce the required peak power capacity of the power stations and distribution grid. In other words, we need essentially just as many power stations, except they can be throttled back (and produce less CO2) when the sun is shining. That's good from an environmental perspective, but not so good economically, because the cost of building and running the power stations is much the same whether they are running near full capacity all the time, or not.
BTW, projects, I am a rooftop PV enthusiast, but I am also a realist.
Posted Saturday 4 Feb 2012 @ 12:31:11 am from IP
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