Clean Energy News

SOLAR power systems are being installed by businesses at triple the rate they were a year ago as a glut of Chinese cells and rising Australian power prices combine to improve solar’s economics and threaten the profits of coal and gas-fired power providers.

Many of the photovoltaic cell systems used by businesses — which mostly need power during the day when solar cells work best — are being installed without major subsidies, the relative economics have improved so much.

The number of commercial solar installations (or those larger than 10 kilowatts) increased from 550 in the first four months of last year to 1460 in the first third of this year, according to AGL figures. A spokesperson from the Mark Group said the average payback period on a commercial solar system was between four and seven years.

More than two million Australians are now getting cheaper power and saving some half a billion dollars a year on their electricity bills, because of their switch to solar energy.

The number of Australian homes with solar power systems has passed the one million mark, according to figures from the Clean Energy Regulator that confirm the milestone was reached in March.

Clean Energy Council Chief Executive David Green said this meant that approximately 2.5 million Australians now lived in a home with a set of solar panels on the roof – more than the entire population of Western Australia.

Clean energy investors have been given a boost today as the Federal Government closed the book on another review of the Renewable Energy Target, again concluding that the scheme is highly effective in driving the transition of the Australian energy sector at very low cost to consumers.

Clean Energy Council Deputy Chief Executive Kane Thornton said common sense had prevailed.

IT WAS Intel founder Gordon E. Moore who observed in 1965 that there was a doubling in the power of computer chips every two years.

Moore predicted this trend would persist for another 10 years and his prognostications have proven eerily correct.

Even extrapolating Moore’s Law, as it became known, beyond the realms of semiconductors into digital technology and elsewhere, technology tends to double in power every couple of years.

And as the performance increases, the price drops in sync.

It is to this phenomenon that electricity consumers can pin their hopes in coming years as they grapple with rising power bills. The technology to deliver cheaper energy is here.

The Federal Government has announced an $83 million solar research program in partnership with the United States.

The eight-year project will bring together six Australian universities, the CSIRO and the US department of energy.

Its aim is to create new technology that will reduce the cost of solar power.

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Source: ABC News