EcoSouth Solar Blog

This article highlights a few things: How low SA power usage has gone; How low it is forecast to go by the national Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO); How SA is a now a world leader(!) in the ratio of Renewable Energy to non-renewable energy usage; AND the speed with which the *change* of this ratio is occurring.

The AEMO are the folk who are charged with running the *artificial* energy market system Australia - and they seem to be in a difficult spot at present with solar, wind and energy efficient plant and appliances, all *severely* reducing, in a very quick way, the nice forecasts of rising power demand they made for the coal and gas people.

Scrapping or winding back Australia’s Renewable Energy Target would lead to significant increases in electricity prices, while delivering a windfall profit to power companies of as much as $70 billion, according to new analysis from Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

I was cold-called the other day to see if I was interested in having solar installed for *FREE*!

Now, being in the solar game for 14 years, and never having encountered a true 'free lunch' yet, I thought I would just ask a few questions and get some idea of how this offer would work. It seems that, yes, the solar truly is installed for *FREE*!, but you then pay for the 'solar electricity you use' at a reduced rate.

Solar on more than 2 million roofs – More than 2 million solar installations have been supported by the Renewable Energy Target as of 31 January 2014 – 1,176,000 solar PV systems and 845,000 solar hot water systems. This means that 24 per cent of the 8.4 million occupied private dwellings in Australia have a solar system.