SolarQuotes’ Finn Peacock: Don’t Call It A Solar Tax!

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A draft determination released by the AEMC last week that would affect home solar in Australia caused quite a stir. Here’s SolarQuotes’ founder Finn Peacock’s take on it.

Last Thursday, the Australian Energy Market Commission released its draft determination on how to integrate more small-scale solar power into the grid and promote home battery uptake through a number of reforms. Among them are proposed charges on solar exports under certain conditions.

This triggered a flurry of clickbait headlines about a “solar tax” and lots of questions and comments coming into SolarQuotes. On Friday, Finn recorded a video with his views on what may lay ahead.

Transcript begins:

I just wanted to allay your fears on this Friday afternoon about the so-called “solar tax”, which is a terrible name for this thing you’ve heard about where solar owners will be made to pay for exports to the grid.

It’s a bit more complicated than what you’ve read about in the headlines.

Basically, the grid has an intrinsic limit on how much solar it can support in terms of them (systems) exporting their solar energy back into the grid when it’s sunny. So, we’ve got two options. We can either do nothing, which means we reach a point quite soon in the next few years where pretty much all solar systems can’t export to the grid.

That’s not good, it will cripple the growth of solar. That’s not good for anyone.

Or, we can pay to upgrade the grid in specific ways that increase the hosting capacity of the grid so more solar owners can export more solar to the grid when the grid needs it. We have a choice, and that’s all this is.

It’s a proposed solution from a mob called the AEMC, the Australian Energy Market Commission, and I personally think we should go with it.

The downside is it’s going to cost solar owners some money in the short term. If you’re a solar owner and you export solar to the grid when the grid really doesn’t need it, you’re going to get charged for that.

But one hand is taking away, another hand is giving.

Part of these proposals is they also reward you more when you export solar energy to the grid when the grid needs it. So, savvy solar owners should be able to come out ahead.

Financial Impact Of Solar Export Charges

But if you do nothing, what are we talking? Well, the proposal estimates if you’ve got a typical solar system – five kilowatt inverter, 6.6 kilowatts of panels – you’re looking at about a hundred dollars a year in lost savings.

It’s not that bad.

If you’re thinking of buying solar, this is not going to cripple your solar savings. You’re probably looking at between $1,200 and $1,500 a year in savings – six and a half kilowatts on a north facing roof and a reasonable feed-in tariff – taking a hundred dollars off that is not the end of the world. And you can probably substantially reduce that by doing some smart things with your solar system.

Not The Perfect Solution, But ..

So, is this the perfect solution? Absolutely not. Should the grid have been upgraded years ago? Should we have seen this coming? Yes. We were talking about this at CSIRO in 2006 – but the grid hasn’t been upgraded for various reasons. This is a way of getting the grid upgraded fairly quickly.

So, let’s do it. Otherwise, the alternative is we stand around and we talk about it for another 10 years and the solar industry grinds to a halt because we hit this intrinsic capacity that the engineers are telling us about.

Nothing Like The EV Tax

And one more thing I just want to get off my chest. This is nothing like the EV tax. Solar uptake in Australia is the best in the world. EV uptake in Australia is the worst in the developed world. So, they’re at two completely different stages. Don’t tax EVs, we need to help EVs. We can put these extra charges on solar because solar is phenomenally successful in Australia already thanks to other good policies.

Don’t believe everything you read in the media and in the green press, this isn’t the end of the world. In my opinion, it’s a good thing for solar. It shows how successful solar has been.

Original Source: https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/solar-exports-aemc-mb1938/