Comments on: Turmoil in Australia: Queensland Government Announces Drastic Cuts to Solar Bonus Feed-in Tariff Scheme

By: Zachary Shahan

Zachary Shahan — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 20:40:00 +0000

it also simply has a conservative head of govt right now. not as bad as the GOP here, but not all that RE-friendly either.

By: Bob_Wallace

Bob_Wallace — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 14:48:00 +0000

It seems to me that renewables in Germany are under significant attack by the coal industry ever since it was seen that the solar installed so far is bringing down the cost of electricity in the country and hurting coal’s profits.

I suspect the coal industry has long recognized that it would not take a lot of solar to make a big change to the cost of peak hour power and if they let that happen then they would have trouble staying profitable.

Zach’s got a couple of good articles showing how a relatively small amount of German solar is making their midday electricity cheap.

By: Chris Boyd

Chris Boyd — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 12:14:00 +0000

It’s all pretty obvious really, someone powerful in the coal or gas industry has had a word in his ear and told him to what to do with the feed in tariff.

If Germany can maintain a healthy feed in tariff, then so can Australia, unless we think we have a special kind of bureaucracy that prevents it.

By: Fiona Woo

Fiona Woo — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 21:05:00 +0000

The government’s media statement cites rising costs as the reason for this cut and McArdle claims the previous FiT rate would impose a cost of $54 per household by 2014/2015. However, the Australian Energy Market Operator estimated last year that the FiT added only $0.00013 per kWh to consumers’ electricity bills. That’s $1 for the average 7 mWh household.

It’s hard for Premier Newman to justify the likely negative effects on the solar industry – and thus the economy! – on such shaky evidence. As the World Future Council argues (and blogs about here: http://power-to-the-people.net/2012/07/sudden-fit-cut-in-queensland/), feed-in tariffs require a stable and predictable policy environment for small-scale businesses and producers to invest in. Implementing this drastic cut and giving a mere 10 business days’ notice for potential applicants, instead of a flexible but steady degression rate, will hurt the sector.

By: Zachary Shahan

Zachary Shahan — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 01:01:00 +0000

agreed. which is why the holy grail of ‘grid parity’ sort of pisses me off.

By: Ross

Ross — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 18:03:00 +0000

I see Campbell Newman has an engineering degree. He really should be following the science and acting accordingly.

By: Ronald Brak

Ronald Brak — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 10:31:00 +0000

Actually, since in a couple of days Queenslanders will pay about 6 cents per kilowatt-hour for electricity to be generated and about 20 cents a kilowatt-hour to have that electricity delivered to them, an 8 cent feed in tariff for point of use solar seems really inadequate considering how little distribution infrastructure it requires. After all, we’re still a long way from suburbs supplying more electricity than they consume at any point.

By: Ronald Brak

Ronald Brak — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 08:17:00 +0000

Eight cents a kilowatt-hour is roughly what coal power plants will get for supplying electricity in the day. I don’t think paying solar roughly the same rate as coal is fair given the amount of emitted CO2 solar avoids and the fact that point of use solar only uses the local grid and not long distance transmission or local substations and so has the potential to let the grid do without expensive transmission upgrades.