The Greening of Gavin

Gross Feed-in Tariff Petition

@ By 8 Comments

My good friends over at Energy Matters have started a small grass roots campaign regarding a renewable energy gross feed in tariff.  It is in the form of an online petition, that I encourage you all to please sign it if you believe in this worthy endeavour to help give a massive boost to the number of installations of renewable energy systems throughout Australia.  Here is the content of the petition;

"Dear Ministers, Senators and Senate Committee Members,

Re: Renewable Energy Feed In Tariffs

We, the undersigned, believe that Australia should implement a nationalised, simple and uniform renewable energy gross feed in tariff system as soon as possible, rather than relying on individual states to develop and maintain their own systems, most of which offer far below what is required  to encourage the uptake of renewable energy systems.

It is crucial that Australia implement a gross feed in tariff model over a net feed in tariff scheme. A net system will only pay on surplus electricity produced, which provides little incentive for home owners and business to make the substantial investment in solar and wind power equipment.

A gross feed in tariff program should  pay a minimum of 80c per kilowatt hour of electricity generation which is fair compensation for the production of clean electricity by privately funded installations. The program should operate for at least 15 years and include an initial 6 month period whereby rebates currently in place are still available to allow the solar industry time to adjust and to stimulate uptake in these troubled economic times.

This rate and commitment will give a much needed boost to investment in and uptake of technologies much cleaner than low-emissions coal, with the added benefit of generating thousands of new jobs in the clean energy sector.

Countries such as Germany, a nation with far less solar resources than Australia, have proved the effectiveness of the gross feed in tariff model for many years. Germany now has the greatest solar power capacity in the world and has generated hundreds of thousands of renewable energy sector jobs due largely to their gross feed in tariff program. Australia is lagging far behind and as a consequence, our greenhouse gas emissions are increasing.

Australia has extensive solar resources and we should be making better use of those rather than focusing energies and investment on the long term viability of environmentally destructive coal-fired power generation.. Emissions controls such as Carbon Capture and Storage require as much as 20 percent of the electricity a power plant generates and the long term safety of such processes is still unproven.

It is only with the full support of the voting public of Australia that the Government will meet its goals of lowering greenhouse gas emissions and the people are ready to play their part if given the proper support and tools to do so.  It is far better, safer and more economically viable not to produce emissions in the first place, and solar energy and wind power offer proven emissions free power generation."

For those of you not familiar with my own opinion regarding the current net feed-in tariff that Victorian State government is currently implementing, have a read of this post, "Feed-in Tariff is a Travesty".  If the state governments can’t get the coal industry monkeys off of their backs, maybe it is time to try a little harder.  Maybe if we get enough signatures on the petition, the Commonwealth Government might stop dancing around the edges of the renewable energy debate and take some affirmative action and implement a gross feed-in tariff. 

A gross feed-in tariff is where the energy-producing household or business (the more the merrier) is paid for all the energy their system produces and not just the electricity fed back into the grid as in a net feed-in tariff.  This is a fair system, and it encourages A gross feed in tariff for Australiamaximum private investment in renewable energy systems.  The gross feed-in tariff is currently working well in many countries throughout the world and is responsible for a boom of renewable energy into those countries energy mix.

Once again, I humbly ask my readers to help take positive climate change action and join me in signing the petition by either pressing the button to the left or visiting the Gross Solar Feed In Tariff Petition site.  Both Kim and I have signed it for a greener Australia.   Help to stop all the hot air coming out of Canberra, and get some government action happening!  Leave me a comment if you have taken the time to sign.  It would be great to see a huge list of comments for this post!

Gav

 

The Solar Revolution – Photovoltaic

@ By 3 Comments

During our Eco House challenge for electricity we determined that for Autumn, Winter and Spring, that our average daily usage was 14 Kilowatt hours (kWh) per day. Not bad for a family of six, I thought as the daily Australian average was 16.44 kWh. Still, I knew we could do better than that. As over 90% of Victoria’s electricity is generated by brown coal which vomits 1.2 Kg of CO2 into the atmosphere for every kilowatt hour generated, we had changed to GreenPower from Origin Energy in January 2007. They had a deal at the time, whereby if you stayed on GreenPower for 12 months then you would receive one months free electricity in the 13th month. It was a good start, but I yearned for more. I wanted to generate my own power from renewable sources.

I set myself a goal that I wanted to generate at least 65% of our own power, and I believed that as the kids began to leave home (one can only hope!) then our energy consumption would drop and the total percentage of generated power would rise. That was the theory and the long time plan.

I researched extensively on the subject of renewable energy, and studied Photovoltaics (PV), Wind, Mini Hydro (I was thinking of what to do with the pool water in winter), and even had a look at steam power! I figured that my house was best suited to photovoltaics as I had the roof space and did not have the land are that wind required or suitable conditions for wind. Besides, I didn’t want my neighbours taking pot-shots at a noisy wind turbine.

Now that I had decided on PV grid connect, I had to figure out how size of the system we required to hit my 65% goal, and how much we could afford. To determine this we need to find out how many peak sunlight hours we received in our area. The Government “Technical Manual – design for lifestyle and the future” was a good resource for this type of thing and I discovered that we received about 4.6 peak sun hours. We live about 50 Km west of Melbourne, and have less rainfall than the city, so I was hoping that the peak sun hours would be more like 5 for our area. So all I had to do was multiply peak sun hours by the kilowatt rating of the system and you get the average kilowatt hours produced by the system per day. So as I needed about 14-15 kWh per day, I calculated that we needed a 2.8 kW PV system (5 * 2.8 = 14). I now asked for a quote from three installers and they ranged from $30,000 to $40,000. The $30,000 quote came from a company called Energy Matters based in South Melbourne. I was the first customer from Melton! They came and did a site survey to see if they could fit a system that large on my house, and told me that I could only get about 6 panels on the main roof. However, they could fit about 20 on the garage roof and it had a northerly aspect with very little shading from trees. With that settled and the quote firmed up, all I had to do was find the money!

I was aware of the Federal Governments decision in the 2007 budget to increase the PV rebate from $4 per watt up to 1kW to $8 per watt up to 1kW. So therefore I would receive back $8000 as a rebate. That was $8000 less I had to find. Also I discovered that my system would generate enough renewable energy to receive about $1400 in Renewable Energy Certificates (REC’s), which I could sell on the market. So the total amount I had to borrow was $20,300 to pay for the system. Energy Matters said that they would take the PV rebate as part of the payment and all I had to do was sign the rebate over to them after installation. I also was entitled to discount of $300 as I was a member of the Alternate Technology Association (ATA). By being a member I also received a subscription to “Renew” magazine which focuses on renewable energy systems. It also helped me understand what I was getting into.

I managed to successfully apply for a personal loan after a lot of hassle with one of our banks, and received a small interest rate discount for being a staff member. I paid the deposit and applied for the PV rebate via Sustainability Victoria in the first week of July 2007. Energy Matters told me that it would probably take 6 weeks for approval, however, Sustainability Victoria replied back within 5 weeks with the approval to go ahead. There was a slight delay after the approval because all of the components had to be sourced from Japan and Germany. I thought at the time, why couldn’t the equipment be manufactured in Australia? Apparently, reliability is the issue for outdoor system. My grid connect inverter would be exposed to the elements. I did find this hard to believe!


Anyway, the installation date was set for August 25th, and after many frustrating days of waiting, the day finally arrived. I took the day off of work so that I would watch the installation. it was a very cool and windy day and the wind got stronger as the day went on. The three installers decided to postpone putting up the panels until later on in the week and we all agreed that this was for the best as I didn’t want any of the guys flying off of the garage roof like a kite holding on to a panel. However, they worked tirelessly to ensure that all of the frames for the panels and all of the electrical work was completed on the first day. This included the installation of the Fronius IG 30 grid connected inverter. The next window of opportunity was the 4th of September. They had everything ready to go and I even stored the 175 Watt Sharp Solar panels in the shed for a week.

The final day arrived and it was a wonderful sunny day. Two installers returned as promised and it took them most of the day to fit the 16 panels and to wire them up to the junction box on the roof. At about 3pm, it was installed in its entirety, and I had the gracious honour of throwing the main breaker. It was a wonderful feeling to watch the inverter start up and then synchronise with the power grid. It registered 1850 watts at that time of day. We all ran over to the electricity meter in the main switchboard, and sure enough the meter was spinning backwards as we were not utilising that amount of power at the time. I was elated!


I thanked James and Jan and after they had packed up they departed. I must have stared at the display on the inverter for about 30 minutes when I had a brilliant idea. I raced inside and presented a chilled bottle of Rose and two glasses to Kim, and we toasted the PV system and the power of the Sun. We both were ecstatic and stayed in the garage until sunset and watched the inverter power off. We went to sleep that night very happy with ourselves.

Over the past 7 months we have generated 2.3 Megawatt hours of clean electricity and are producing 64.3% of our own power needs. When we reach the 1st anniversary of the system we will have a better indication of our generating capacity. It is in the Summer months that we consume the most due to air-conditioning, ceiling fans, and longer operating hours for the pool pump. I believe that we will ultimately generate between 75 and 80 percent of our electricity needs, but only time will tell.


On a final note, the PV system has had an unexpected effect on all the family. By generating our own energy, we began to respect all of our power usage much more than our simple effort of energy efficiency. Lights and appliances began to turn off without a word from me, and the kids all became power savers instead of power wasters. All a fantastic effect if you ask me as all family members are now energy conscious!