Specializing in remote stand-alone PV or PV-diesel installations would seem the place to be now.
The new federal government would seem to want to take us back to the seventies for main urban power supplies for the next year or two. During this two year period they can be noisy undoing the carbon tax, the renewable energy target, depowering energy efficiency drives, basically catering to their redneck base.
But by 2016 PV will have continued its decline in price and be a standard feature on new-build suburban homes just because the new householders will not want to pay 30c/kWhr when PV can give it to them for around 10c/kWhr, 20c/kWhr if they add storage. So be 2016 the existing model for generating and distributing electricity to residences will be obviously on the way to the scrap heap. Abbott won't be able to tax it or legislate against it because there will be over 4M voters in houses with solar. Even low income earners will succumb to no-dollar-down hire purchase schemes.
From now until 2016 though residential solar will be in a hard place. Government REC-type support will be minimal, costs will go up as the $A falls.
Utilities will, successfully I think, fight back and prevent commercial installs on warehouses, supermarkets etc becoming a tick and flick installation process. Commercial installations will stay expensive and a regulatory minefield and so stay limited.
Commercial scale utility microgrids on mining camps, small bush villages, tourist camps, should be the growth area. Wholesale component (panels, inverters, batteries, controllers) prices will continue to fall, skill levels in design/build/operate companies will be rising, diesel prices will rise (bet on $2/l by 2016?).
The bush will be the place to be.
Has SOO left itself enough skills and financing resources to find a seat in the musical chairs game where the large number of installation companies currently operating eat each other to one of those left standing?
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