Ingenero CEO Steve McRae was in charge of showing Cr Abbot around our new office, warehouse and call centre in Warana. The day was made even more special by quite a bit of media attention for the event.
Their interest was drawn because of our substantial growth in the last few months and our decision to base our new facilities on the Sunshine Coast.
“We are delighted to welcome Ingenero, its staff and its facility,” Cr Abbot said. Council has a goal of making the Sunshine Coast the most sustainable region in Australia.
“Creating new, green jobs in sustainable industries is central to that vision.”
After 18 months of promoting solar energy, I finally got my own solar power system installed. The first full day of it running produced 11.1kWh. My mind jumped ahead: “11.1kWh in a day multiplied by 365 is 4,051.5kWh. We are with Origin, so we receive 50c per kWh that goes back into the grid. That means, if we achieved a 100% feed-in rate, we’d receive $2,025.75 per year!
How quickly can I get more panels on my roof?”
Then I looked at my meter. And as so many of our clients had told me, it was really running backwards:
Assumptions are Exciting but Wrong
Of course, the calculation is not correct. Firstly, this first day was a beautiful cloudless day, not too hot, so the solar power system would have produced close to capacity. On cloudy days it is going to be significantly less. In winter with shorter days it is also going to be less. It might be a little more as the days get longer, but extrapolating from one day is just not realistic.
The next wrong assumption is that we can feed 100% of the produced power back into the grid. For Queensland with its net feed-in tariff that will not happen. When we have out new meter from Energex, I’ll update you on what is realistic for us.
The other thing is that we have a 2kW system, so it is larger than the 1.08kWh or 1.6kW that most people have. However, our roof is East facing, rather than the ideal North. We had to go for that as it is the roof with the least shade (it hits about 2.30pm in the afternoon, but by then, the angle of the sun is not producing much power anymore anyway).
It is so worth it!
We also have one of the Climate Smart home meters. From that I know that our average daily consumption is 5.5kWh – less than half of that during the day. So we should be able to export two thirds back into the grid. That would still be over $1,000. Plus the savings of our own electricity.
We got the old $8,000 Federal Solar Rebate, so our return would be close to 20%. This would be one of the best returns on any investments we’ve made. Without this rebate, it should still be over 10% return, better than any bank offers.
What the actual financial outcome will be, I won’t know until in a year. But the joy and excitement of having our own power produced on site, clean and green that is great. And it has really renewed my excitement about what we are offering.
From January 2010, anyone selling a home in Queensland must provide the buyer with a sustainability declaration, which specifies the sustainability features incorporated in the dwelling. The two page document is designed to be completed by the seller and spells out the probable dollar savings of certain features.
For example, a 1kW solar power system is listed as saving $273 a year or 21 per cent of the average electricity bill. A solar hot water system is listed as saving $346 a year and a heat pump $263 a year. Of course, the actual savings depend on the habits of the people in the household. Some frugal people with a 1kW solar power system never pay electricity bills.
The more sustainability features, the cheaper the home is to run, and the lower its carbon footprint, which makes it a more attractive proposition to the prospective buyer.
The most common type of solar, and the one you are most likely to see on roofs around your suburb, is photovoltaic, or solar PV. But solar PV is not the only type of system that can be used to transfer the sun’s energy into electricity.
There are several types of power generation methods being researched and developed but the most tried and tested methods are Concentrated Photovoltaic, Solar Thermal and Solar Ponds.
Concentrated PV
Concentrated PV works on the same premise as normal PV however it involves using mirrors to reflect rays onto either a solar cell or a solar tower. This concentrates more rays onto the same solar cell than what would be acquired through using a flat PV module.
Solar Thermal
Solar Thermal again uses the technology of flat panel collectors however it uses these to heat water to produce high pressure steam. This steam then moves a turbine that generates an electrical current through a generator.
Solar Ponds
Solar ponds differ from the PV, Concentrated PV and Solar Thermal which all use some form of collector. They instead use salt-water lakes lined with black plastic. The plastic acts as an absorber of the solar radiation. The top of the lake is maintained with fresh water while the denser salt water collects at the bottom of the pond. Combined with the solar radiation, the dense salt water can increase up to temperatures of 85-90°C, thus creating steam to drive a turbine and again create an electrical current through a generator.
Each of these are developing technologies and therefore have their own challenges, further emphasising that PV is the best proven technology so far on the market
SolarPay News Feed
The next wrong assumption is that we can feed 100% of the produced power back into the grid. For Queensland with its 
We’ve outgrown our Sunshine Coast office and are moving to 3/5 Premier Circuit, Warana Qld 4575.