The changing landscape of government solar policy

Two weeks after withdrawing the rebate on grid-connected domestic solar power systems, the Federal Government today (23 June) announced it would do the same for off-grid systems.

The Renewable Remote Power Generation Program ends today in all states except Western Australia. The program effectively funded up to half the costs of solar panels, wind turbines or batteries for people in remote areas.

Today’s announcement from the NSW government was more positive: a net feed-in tariff of 60 cents a kilowatt hour. This means that anyone with a solar power system can sell the excess energy they generate back into the grid for around four times the price of buying it from the grid.

The tariff applies to systems up to 10 kilowatts in size and begins on 1 January 2010.

Related Topics

• Can the Queensland Government deliver on its solar hot water promise?
  There has been no new information from the Queensland Government on how they intend delivering on their promise of putting cheap solar hot water systems into 200,000 Queensland homes under...
  
  
• Changes to government solar programs, again
  The Federal Government has been very busy lately, rearranging its support for the solar industry and support for householders installing domestic solar power and hot water. And once again it...
  
  
• Victorian Government extends, but reduces, solar hot water rebate
  The bad news for Victoria is that the Victorian government is reducing the Solar Hot Water Rebate for regional communities. The good news for bushfire-affected communities is that they are...
  
  

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009 at 6:24 pm 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.