"IT'S A DIRTY GAME"
Kate Cowling reports in the SMH this week that, for many who made the switch to solar, the financial incentives were as much of a hook as the environmental feel-good factor. But now those generous feed in tariffs for putting energy back into the grid are far less generous than they were and in some cases, non-existent. It raises questions about whether solar still makes financial sense.
When Kevin O'Toole, a Sydney resident, recently installed solar panels, he was told the provider he chose would "pay the government-legislated feed-in tariff amount". What he didn't realise until he got his first bill, was that the NSW rate is 0.00. "They never mentioned then that their feed-in tariff was zero," he says. "It's a very dirty game, with weird pricing structures."
Kevin has since switched to another provider, which pays a feed-in tariff above baseline, and says he's confident solar is still worthwhile due to cheaper system costs and energy savings, but says you have to shop around.
In NSW, feed-in tariffs have dropped from around 60c per kilowatt hour to 5-8c a kilowatt hour. The highest you can get in Australia now is about 10c per kilowatt.The reason is the government-mandated incentives have expired or are close to expiry (NSW officially ends this year), which means feed-in tariffs are at the discretion of the retailer.
While feed-in tariffs are falling, so is the cost of solar power systems. For a small, 1.5-kilowatt system connected to the grid, you're looking at between $2000 and $5000, while a 5-kilowatt system now retails for around $10,000. Just a few years ago, it wasn't unheard of to be paying $20,000.
