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| Wed, 20th May 2020 13:44:00 |
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Concerns over plan to switch off household solar panels when grid is unstable |
Thanasis Avramis has been an advocate of solar panels since he had them installed in 2008.
He is not happy with a new proposal from authorities to switch off or constrain output from household solar systems as an emergency measure to stabilise the nation's electricity grid.
"In the last 12 years we've probably earned about $9,000 worth of feed-in tariff. That's been a very substantial reduction in the cost of our electricity," Mr Avramis told 7.30.
"The default position has often been to force a solution on Australian families for problems that are the fault of the network as a whole — and the regulator, and the many particular governments at one time or another that have not been able to plan properly."
Australia is leading the world in per capita growth of rooftop solar, with new panels installed about every six and a half minutes.
Since 2010, the number of panels across the nation has grown from 100,000 to 2.2 million.
But the proliferation is at times leading to grid instability, prompting the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) to call for the switch-off measure.
AEMO CEO Audrey Zibelman said it would only be used in emergencies if the grid became overwhelmed.
"This is very temporary, very limited and really, what we would say, a last resort control we need if we were worried the system would otherwise go black," Ms Zibelman told 7.30.
"When we have way too much solar there's so little load we can't even manage to keep the balance with the generators, and in that context there's always a risk that the system could fail and will go black."
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