South Australia’s State Budget 2018-19 has delivered on SA Liberal’s election commitment to sink a big chunk of change in establishing its Home Battery Scheme.
$100 million dollars has been committed over 4 years for the Scheme, which will provide subsidies for up to 40,000 households to buy solar battery storage systems – that works out to $2,500 per instance.
“The Home Battery Scheme is a critical component of the State Government’s plans to deliver cheaper electricity to South Australian households and small businesses,” said Minister for Energy and Mining Dan van Holst Pellekaan.
The Home Battery Scheme is separate to South Australian Virtual Power Plant project, which was kicked off under the Weatherill Government. The future of that looked shaky after the election, but the Marshall Government confirmed its support for the project that will see 50,000 home solar power and Tesla Powerwall battery systems installed across South Australia.
As for further details regarding the Home Battery Scheme, including eligibility and when it will actually kick off, they are yet to materialise.
UPDATE September 10: Details of the Home Battery Scheme subsidy have been announced.
In total, $184 million was earmarked for the Marshall Liberal Government’s “Energy Solution” in Budget 2018-19.
Other funding announced:
Grid Scale Storage Fund
Grants totaling $50 million over 4 years will be provided to support development of new energy storage technologies to back up renewables and enhance reliability of South Australia’s electricity system.
Demand Response, Aggregation & Distributed Generation Integration
$30 million over 3 years will go towards trials establishing ways to reward electricity consumers for changing their consumption patterns and providing demand flexibility, with the aim of reducing peak demand and lowering system costs. Minister van Holst Pellekaan said the government is also investing in new technologies to enhance integration of additional distributed generation supply into the network.
Additional Interconnector Early Works
$4 million will be provided to transmission network operators to make a start on early works for a new interconnector between SA and NSW. Additionally, the government will provide a finance guarantee of up to $10 million for these activities.
“Reducing electricity costs was a core promise of the Marshall Liberal team and the 2018-19 State Budget demonstrates the new Government’s commitment to that pledge,” said Minister van Holst Pellekaan.
An energy related initiative to have funding diverted is the Energy Productivity Program. $4.2 million will be delivered to the Energy Solution commitments from the reallocation of funds not yet committed under the program, which assists large commercial energy users to reduce related costs.
SA Labor leader Peter Malinauskas and Shadow Minister for Mining and Energy Tom Koutsantonis are yet to make comment on the energy related budget announcements.
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I wonder whether is is a better use of funds, for state governments to provide subsidies, which limit the beneficiaries to those who have available, the spare funds to pay the gaps, and, which limit the funds to a single use (once the subsidy is paid, it can not be recycled), or, whether it would be better, to instead, provide to homeowners/homebuyers, interest-free finance for the full capital outlay, which would mean that beneficiaries would not need to have thousands of dollars of cash laying around (we are not all filthy rich members of parliaments or company directors), and, as the interest-free loans are repaid, the incoming funds from the repayments, could be recycled, to provide more interest-free loans, for other people, for the same purpose, so. more and more people could benefit, on an ongoing basis.
And, what a great use that could be, for part of the revenue, if WA ever got its fair share of the GST revenue, especially, backdated, ab initio, so that the GST would be fairly shared, dependent on the number of residents per state/territory.