Solar power: making electricity at home

By GLENN CAMPBELL

It may appear counter-intuitive, but getting millions of solar panels onto rooftops saves more money than it costs. Feed-in tariffs enacted by state governments have enabled ordinary Australians using their savings to build a solar power station at home benefiting the community.

When those solar households who had saved to get their panels installed under the solar feed-in tariff programs export their solar production to the grid, which occurs mostly during higher demand daytime periods, they are given a slightly higher than average retail rate for the electricity they are selling. The prices they have been paid are relatively meagre when compared with the ridiculously high rates paid to big coal or gas power plants.
At the same time that little solar households who have invested their money in a rooftop power station are being paid between 44¢ and 60¢ per kilowatt hour, the old power companies with their dirty belching coal and gas plants are receiving as much as $12.50.
In other words, the coal and gas guys are being paid as much as $11.90 more than a home solar generator for just one unit of electricity.
A home solar system installed in NSW sized at 10 kilowatts, which was the limit for feed-in-tariff eligibility under the now-defunct state scheme, would export roughly 9kWh and reduce line losses by more than 10 per cent during a very hot sunny day when everyone was running their airconditioners. That meant a coal or gas plant would not need to generate 10kWh for every 9kWh a solar household produces at home during that period. During these high-price events, which account for more than 30 per cent of the cost of electricity, we can buy our power from a gas or coal plant at the inflated price of $125 or we can buy it from a home solar generator for just $5.40.
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