Wishful thinking for a solar future

Welcome to this Blog that Shows How to Make Solar Pay

It’s great that you are considering making the switch to solar. Here you will find a wide variety of information designed to answer all your questions about putting solar power, solar hot water or a heat pump in your home.

To start you off, you can receive an instant, on-line proposal tailored for your situation simply by answering some questions about your rooftop and household.

Our on-line calculator will work out the best solution for you instantly. You will also be given a series of valuable information that explains the benefits of solar technology for your household, in terms of energy savings and how our systems pay for themselves – everything you need to go solar.

An article in The Australian last week (23 July) reported the electricity industry is asking for up to $20 billion in extra government assistance. This is to avoid the impacts of the Federal Government’s proposed Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). Somewhere the point has been lost that the ETS is meant to make the coal industry less viable.

We have been pondering what the solar sector could do with this vast amount of money if it were to manifest itself for our benefit.

For a start, $20 billion will buy around two million 1.5kW systems, not factoring in government subsidies, e.g. RECs or Solar Credits. Each system will pay for itself over 20 years (assuming there is a feed-in tariff in place). In other words the investment in each system is repaid at around $500 a year.

So, while the investment is being repaid it creates the ability of the solar industry to reinvest in even more solar systems.

If 400,000 dwellings a year were to have 1.5kW solar systems installed, at the end of 10 years they would cumulatively be generating 9,000 MWh. This is more than twice the energy generated by the large 1400 MW Tarong power station that powers much of Brisbane and emits 9.8 million tonnes of greenhouse gas a year in the process. As the average car produces 4.5 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions a year, running Tarong is equivalent to running almost 2.2 million cars.

Unfortunately it is quite unrealistic for the solar industry to have the capacity to install 400,000 systems in the first year, however it could start smaller and ramp up. Think of the green jobs it would create.

What a great solar future it would be if these figures were not simply wishful thinking.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 29th, 2009 at 3:18 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.