Cheap Therapy

With power prices set to be hiked next year to better reflect their true environmental cost it seems a lot of people are putting grid connected solar power systems on their roof (noticed one on a new house just today as I walked home) and selling it back to Synergy as part of the Renewable Energy Buyback Scheme (REBS). I’ve discussed it with various people who have looked into it and discovered:

• Power is not sold into the grid at the rate Synergy charges consumers for NaturalPower (being 4.4c per unit above normal)
• Power sold into the grid gets you credit off your power bill. The credit cannot be exchanged for actual money (write your MP and complain). So there’s no incentive to try to generate more than you use, even though it saves the company on power generation and distribution costs, let alone the environment. You also only get 10/11ths of the agreed tariff to account for GST

Renewable energy buyback scheme PDF here. Info on the Photovoltaic Rebate Program is here. There’s also AU$500 subsidy for moving to a gas boosted solar hot water system.

Track how much energy the solar panels at the GooglePlex are producing.