Inevitable?
Householders with rooftop solar panels and batteries have reacted with fury to proposals which could see them charged for exporting power to the electricity grid.Key points:
- State Governments have historically rewarded people for buying solar
- Some state electricity grids are coming close to reaching their limit for rooftop solar
- Solar owners are furious with the idea, arguing they will not recoup their investment
Over the past decade, state governments have actively incentivised households to feed their solar into the grid, by offering generous feed-in tariff schemes. Most have now closed to new entrants.
But now, welfare groups and transmission company SA Power Networks have asked the Australian Energy Markets Commission to change market rules to impose a charge on household exporters.
They argue that under the current system, households without solar could be unfairly burdened with the cost of augmenting power networks to cope with the increase of new panels, which isalready placing a strain on the network in states with heavy solar penetration like South Australia.
SA Power Networks spokesman Paul Roberts said the state's grid is already reaching its capacity to support household solar networks.
"Actual customers themselves are seeing that their inverters are turning off at times because of voltage rising in the network," Mr Roberts told ABC Radio Adelaide.
"And the renewables industry is getting concerned that networks like ours will have to impose zero limits on new customers so that we can accept those customers, but they won't be able to export.
"So there needs to be a solution to that."
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-07-16/rooftop-solar-owners-could-be-charged-to-sell-energy-to-the-grid/12461748
