Would You Buy Power From Your Neighbour?
Why do homeowners with solar panels now get treated completely differently depending on which state they live in?
And why isn’t there a way for those who don’t have a solar-friendly rooftop to get some of their energy from the sun?
Well, both of those things might be about to change...
Last week the Victorian Essential Services Commission (ESC) set a price for feeding solar electricity into the grid of 11.3 cents per kilowatt hour compared to the rest of the country which now gets between 5-6c on average.
Claire O’Rourke (pictured) is the National Director of Solar Citizens, an independent community based organisation working to protect and grow solar in Australia.
Solar Citizens are currently running a campaign called Fair Go For Solar which is lobbying to get the price between 10-18 cents nationally which she says reflects the benefits to society of solar panels including environmental, and taking pressure off the overloaded grid.
As for those who can’t put panels up and would like to, a new project could offer them a chance to buy cheaper electricity from their neighbours according to news.com.au
There are many people who can’t install solar panels because they are renters, live in apartment blocks, can’t afford the cost or because their homes are heavily shaded or in a bad position for solar.
But Nexergy hopes to offer these people the opportunity to buy “green power” at a cheaper price than they can currently purchase this from electricity companies.
At the moment residents generally pay a premium to buy electricity generated by wind farms or other sources, yet those who have solar panels can only sell their excess electricity back to the grid for a relatively low price of between six and eight cents per kilowatt hour.
Nexergy co-founder Grant Young said he wanted to allow residents to buy cheaper solar electricity from their neighbours instead.
Mr Young said residents currently paid about 23 to 25c/kWh to electricity companies for green power, a lot more than the 6-8c/kWh that residents can get paid for selling their excess solar electricity to the grid.
A win-win situation could be created if residents could instead sell their excess solar to neighbours instead at a slightly higher price of say 16c/kWh, which would give them a better return but would also be cheaper than what the neighbours were currently paying.
Mr Young said this type of trading still used the grid as a way of transporting the electricity and so companies could still collect network charges.
It would also provide a buffer against blackouts as local communities could become “isolable micro or mini grids” that could draw on their own power supplies if the national grid experienced an outage.
Mr Young said this type of decentralised system allowed areas to run independently for a period if main transmission lines were damaged, like what happened in South Australia recently.
Nexergy is developing an app to help get this system running, with a trial expected to begin this year. It is one of 50 businesses being showcased at the NewCo Enterpreneurial Festival in Sydney this week.
If its app is successful, it could mean installing batteries in homes and businesses, even for those without solar panels, could become more lucrative.
Mr Young said the cost of batteries was still a barrier for many but costs had come down dramatically in the last few years, and would keep getting lower.
Other barriers included regulation around network charges to allow people to only pay for the part of the network they use, and the need for smart digital meters to measure electricity usage constantly.
While the Nexergy model is similar to the “virtual power plant” model other companies like Reposit are trialling, Mr Young said Nexergy users could keep control of the electricity they produced.
Unlike other models that allow utilities or retailers to decide when to draw electricity from their batteries, Nexergy customers can chose when they want to make electricity available.
