STC prices dropping means solar prices have risen. What has that done to solar payback times?
We were warned.
We all knew this was coming.
But who among us was prepared for the recent tumble in the price of STCs that lower the cost of rooftop solar?
Well, I was. [Read more…]
Do solar rebates result in the poor subsidising the rich?
If you spend a significant amount of time on the internet, which I can’t recommend as it is a silly place, then you may have come across people who claim rooftop solar is an enormous scam that depends on government subsidies unfairly taken from those who can’t install it, or choose not to. [Read more…]
If you own a good-sized solar power system, rising electricity prices are not a worry, in fact some solar owners will see their bills decrease thanks to rising feed-in-tariffs.
Australians don’t pay the highest electricity prices in the world, but we’re working on it. [Read more…]
What will give you the lowest bill, a standard or time of use tariff? What if you add solar? What about batteries?
Australians pay for grid electricity in two ways. The most common way is a standard tariff. But you can also choose a time-of-use tariff.
This is where you pay a fixed rate for each kilowatt-hour used, plus a hefty supply charge. Australians have been paying for electricity this way since the the electricity meter, invented in 1888, was developed into the ‘spinning dial’ type in 1914. So Australians have been using standard tariffs for over a century. [Read more…]
Supply charges have no place in a 21st Century electricity network.
Do you know what I hate? What I truly despise? What causes black bile to bubble up from the deepest, darkest depths of my soul? Supply charges on electricity bills. [Read more…]
Learn how to hack the government’s electricity bill data for fun and profit…
If you own a solar system but haven’t shopped around the electricity retailers in a while, your bills are probably higher than they need to be.
The big gentailers, Origin, AGL and Energy Australia have made their disdain for solar very clear. They all lobbied to scrap government support for small scale solar during Tony Abbott’s RET review in 2014. And unsurprisingly their electricity tariff offers for solar owners are pretty ordinary.
Luckily there are lots of smaller retailers around these days that often beat the big names. And a handful of those offer solar Feed In Rates that are higher than the rates mandated by your state government. [Read more…]
The declining cost of solar is making Aussie coal exports look increasingly expensive.
Not-so-strange bedfellows Greg “Smiley” Hunt and Big Clive emerged hand in hand after negotiating the “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap” (sorry “Direct Action”) legislation earlier this week. Meanwhile a less publicised news article revealed the dirty truth behind the future, or otherwise, of fossil fuel exports to one of our major markets.
That truth is that it is now more expensive for India to import Aussie coal than produce their own solar power. [Read more…]
Are solar roofs making solar power stations uneconomic?
Utility scale solar, or solar farms, are fields of PV panels which generate electricity that is fed directly into the grid. Currently we don’t have much of this in Australia. Over 99% of our solar capacity is point of use which is mostly on rooftops and the juice it does produce is first used to power the household or business it is on top of and then after that the excess is generally fed into the grid. [Read more…]
Now that solar power has become more of a threat, big US utility companies responsible for providing electricity want to buy in. With the cultural push to become more reliant on renewable energy sources and the increase in people wanting to break free from their higher utility bills, many utility companies are opting to become more solar friendly in order to keep their business.
While overall this might be a good thing, the intentions are purely economic. Big utilities in the USA are in the discussions with local governments in order to build or install solar panels into their networks. Some states have been open to this idea but others have resisted since it appears to only kill off the only competition electric companies have.
To learn more about this development, click here.
Rising electricity costs are driving more people to consider solar.
An Ernst and Young utilities survey report released this week has highlighted the battle ordinary Australians are having with their rising electricity bills. The study also found over 90 percent of those surveyed would like to switch to solar power. [Read more…]
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