Extract from ABC News
Updated
Australia's household solar revolution has caught the
energy sector by surprise, and may leave NSW and Queensland taxpayers
footing the bill for billions of dollars worth of "stranded assets".
More
than a million Australians have already installed solar panels on their
roofs, causing demand for electricity from the grid to plummet.For decades demand for electricity had grown, a trend the industry and government banked on.
Energy economist Greg Houston describes the solar take up as "a once in generation shift".
"I don't think there's been anything like this that's affected the energy market in the last 50 years," Mr Houston said.
The state-owned industry in NSW and Queensland recently invested billions of dollars upgrading the electricity distribution network, the so-called "poles and wires".
Australian Solar Institute research advisory committee member Muriel Watt is warning much of the industry's investment may have been wasted.
"We've just spent more than $50 billion upgrading networks, some of which may not be useful going forward, and they may end up being stranded assets," Dr Watt said.
She says the boom in solar installation shows no sign of slowing down.
The mix of excessive investment and people opting out has seen the networks' risk being called an industry "death-spiral" where remaining customers are charged more which may force more people to switch to solar.
"The uptake is still going up, even though feed-in tariffs and other subsidies have come off," Dr Watt said.
UBS analyst David Leitch says householders' investment in solar technology has driven most of the recent price hikes.
"Electricity consumption in Australia declined by a total of about 13 per cent over the past three or four years, something that would have astonished people if you'd said that five years ago," Mr Leitch said.
In the past five years electricity demand has steadily fallen, which has been partly driven by the closures of high-energy aluminium smelters and car factories.
But half has been driven by ordinary people. A quarter of South Australian homes and one fifth of Queensland houses have already switched to solar.
Consumers are also buying energy-efficient household appliances - fridges, LED TVs, even light bulbs - to drive down consumption.
Technological advances such as battery storage is enabling solar households to run during peak demand, at night.
Analysts predict that cheaper lithium batteries being developed in the United States may soon make it feasible for people to leave the grid entirely.
"That's making grid defection closer and closer to being an economically sensible proposition," Mr Leitch said.
No comments:
Post a Comment