A fairly crappy investment in every sense — even as a “subsidy farmer”:
…renewable energy proponents say individual consumers like Mr Pulford could play an increasingly important role as citizen investors.
“I say it is a little bit gold plated,” Mr Pulford says of his $20,000 investment.
‘The new system was installed last month and he is already generating enough power to run all his home energy needs, charge his son’s hybrid SUV and sell excess back to the grid. “It ranges between $2 to about $1.90 a day for energy and that can be with the clothes dryers and bar heaters on.”
Mr Pulford said he expects to pay off the investment within 14 years.
He’s excited that his electricity bill is only $700 a year, after laying out twenty grand. After 14 years his “investment” will start to pay off, assuming the batteries are still running, the solar panels are clean, and the inverter didn’t need replacing. Those battery warranties, at best, are ten years. He might get lucky. Without subsidies, his “pay-back time” would be something like 30% longer.
In the ACT, 250 homes with Reposit technology are generating up to 1.2 megawatts, which is dwarfed by territory-wide consumption.
Reposit power gets a free advertisement from the ABC, but the ABC don’t mention that when it is forecast to be cloudy, the software Reposit uses is designed to charge the battery direct from the grid (and that will be mostly coal-fired). That way “solar users” get electricity at off peak prices and they can sell back the electricity at higher peak rates. This will help the grid deal with the intermittency of solar and wind, a problem the grid didn’t need to have.
The ACT has pledged to be 100% renewable by 2025. I say “bring it on” but they’ll only be 100% renewable when they cut the interconnectors.
Glorious solar subsidies
The ACT Government has released a third round of funding to accelerate solar battery storage and the $4 million includes subsidies for batteries with Reposit control boxes.
Mr Pulford agreed.
“We can’t continue to use fossil fuels for our energy because the future generation will pay the price,” he said.
It’s not the future generation who will pay, it’s people poorer than Mr Pulford who are already paying for the subsidy. He rationalizes his burden on the system with the superstitious belief that having solar panels on the roof will somehow make life nicer for future generations.
I’m sure he is a nice guy, but when it comes to accepting money from taxpayers, half the population is happy not-to-look-too-hard.
Isn’t it time we taught kids where taxpayer money comes from?
Solar subsidies for a 6kW system are round $3,500:
The lowest value STCs have held is $16, while their cap price is $40. Using the median price of $28 as a guide, the “rebate” you would receive for the 6.48 kW system described earlier is approximately 125 x 28 = $3500, which represents 30 to 40% of the price of a good quality system. Real-time STC market prices can be found online.
The subsidies were $1,000 bigger before July 20th 2017.
Choice Magazine looked at solar “payback times” and estimated it took 14 – 24 years.
h/t Dave B.