National Gross Feed-in Tariff on the Agenda

Queensland Premier Anna Bligh has signalled a national gross feed-in tariff will be high on the agenda at the next Council of Australian Governments (COAG) meeting. Speaking to reporters whilst on the campaign trail in Toowoomba on Monday she indicated that Queensland would only move away from its current net feed-in tariff if a national approach was taken.

Currently only the ACT has a gross feed-in tariff, whilst other states still pay households only for the excess electricity generated from their grid-connect photovoltaic systems.

Net feed-in tariffs pay consumers for the excess electricity they have generated, or to put it in another way, the electricity they have fed back into the grid, minus the electricity they have used from the grid. (note: an important point on this is made below)

Gross feed-in tariffs pay consumers for all the electricity they generate from their grid-connect photovoltaic or wind, or hyrdo-powered systems regardless of what they have consumed from the electricity grid.

What do you mean by excess?

Well that’s a good question as most people believe a calculation is done at some time (daily, weekly, monthly, yearly) whereby energy fed back into the grid is compared against energy used from the grid. This would be the case if two separate meters were used to display kilowatt-hours produced and kilowatt-hours used (as is done with a gross feed-in tariff).

If this was the arrangement with net feed-in tariffs, on the average grid-connect system, you would never be directly paid for the electricity your solar panels have generated. A 1kW system in southeast Queensland may, in the peak of summer, produce 5 kilowatt-hours per day. And that will only occur if the panels are installed correctly and not shaded at any time of the day.

However, in Queensland and most other states, it is standard national practice to use a single electronic meter in place of the principle tariff meter. Therefore, when the sun is shining, during each electricity cycle (AC electricity cycles at 50 times per second), the meter compares energy generated from the solar panels to energy used from the electricity grid. That means, comparisons are occurring in real time, and not over a standard billing period.  If at any one moment you are generating more than what you are using, you will get paid at the higher feed-in tariff rate.

How do I get the greatest benefit?

The greatest financial benefit for the consumer is achieved when you have all appliances switched off whilst the solar panels are generating electricity. You got to work, no one is home, and all appliances are switched off at the wall. But wait, what about the fridge?

In reality most energy efficient people can ‘net export’ about half the power they generate from their solar panels (remember you are never using the power from the solar panels directly – it is always being fed back into the grid).  Appliances such a fridges, cycle on and off during the day, and most families are not always away from the house during the sunlight hours.

Energy efficiency is therefore the most important factor for anyone considering installing grid-connect solar power.

If you currently have a large air-conditioner but want to go solar, then consider this: the air conditioner will consume about four times as much power as what you can produce from the sun over the same period.

Benefits of the gross feed-in tariff

So what of Bligh’s push for a gross feed-in tariff? Firstly it will require changing the existing metering. However, no matter what your power consumption, with a gross feed-in tariff you are being paid for every kilowatt-hour generated by the sun. Some have said this discourages energy efficiency.

However as the Garnaut report states “incentives to consume should come through the retail tariff paid for electricity, not through the feed-in tariff system”.

After all, households who have made the financial commitment and are producing electricity from a renewable resource, should be rewarded for every kilowatt-hour they generate. And financial incentives in the form of rebates should therefore increase so that renewable energy it is not beyond the reach of any household. On a world scale we can do little to deter coal-power electricity generation, but at the domestic level we should be able to make renewable energy a cheaper option for all Australians.

I’d be very interested to read your thoughts on this.

Related Topics

• NSW announces gross feed-in tariff
  Great news for the residents of New South Wales. Anyone with a solar power system (up to 10kW in size) will be able to sell ALL the electricity they generate...
  
  
• New higher feed-in tariff in Queensland
  It’s good to see Queensland electricity retailers are stepping up the rate they pay customers on the net feed-in tariff for solar energy. AGL recently announced a “Premium Solar Rebate”...
  
  
• How to make money putting solar energy back into the grid
  If you have seen anything about solar energy in the news it is more than likely you have come across the term feed-in-tariff or FiT....
  
  

Tags: feed in tariff, grid connect solar power, Renewable energy

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 17th, 2009 at 10:50 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.