Australia rooftop solar charts another record month, even as prices edge up

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• The COALition constantly spooking the horses over energy prices is the gift that keeps on giving to solar installers.

• Looking good, 142 MW is 1.7 GW annualized.
  167MW per month by years end ? that would be 2GW per year...for 2019 ?

• I called 1.8GW for the year back in April. Watch Victoria go and stuff me up.
  I am surprised at the cost uptick given the alleged PV glut. I think maybe installers are swamped and adding a premium.

• Feed in tariffs going down, here in Tasmania, we don’t have ideal weather, for solar, we need more power, in Winter, when the days are shorter, we need more heat in the night, when there’s no sun. Not like Queensland, where they need energy, for air conditioning, in the day, in Summer, when the days are long.
  But solar is becoming so cheap, that even in Tasmania, with cheap hydro power, a solar shop, just opened in my little town, of 2,000 people. We see counter intuitive things happening, like using non ideal roof angle surfaces. Which although it gives, less power per day, it gives its power, at the time, the ideal angle surfaces output, is reducing. Thus smoothing the input to for instance batteries, which are going down in price, per kWh even faster than solar power.
  So cheap is solar, that you can get financing packages, no money up front, soon you’ll be able to get financing for rooftop solar, including non ideal angles, in Tasmania, with electric vehicles and household batteries. It only takes 5 years to make your money back, in Queensland, 7 in Tasmania; I used to think installation prices, would limit the expansion of solar, but even they, are reducing.
  Globally, we keep on hearing about gigawatt solar farms, billion dollar plants, financed by China, to keep up demand, in places like India, let alone, what’s likely to happen, on the belt road. My prediction, 1/4 of the deserts, covered in solar farming, 25 times as much energy, available to the world, in a decade, just like what happened from 1915-25. 5 year lagging economic indicators, the roaring twenties, taking them from Dickensian squalor, to modern sewerage works, Clean water, garbage disposal, in a single decade, of the second industrial revolution.
  In their clean disruption, they increased their quality of life, standards of living, by getting stomachs, with food from refrigerated warehouses, to ice boxes. We’ll get lungs unpoisened by soot and smog, with higher oxygen levels, due to high rise agriculture, vertical farming, hydrogen production oxygen waste, bulk piped into the cities. We’ll have the energy transportation and food prices, that’ll give us the disposable income, for built environment oxygen enhancement, dehumidifiers, air filters. That in combination, will give us an increase in lifespan of 20 years, just like the last time, we got a big peak decade, of industrial revolution.
  Not just cheaper food, better, fresher food, another round of water improvement, through reverse osmosis desalination, that’s just my take on the situation. Predicting the future, is like predicting the weather, too many variables, but odds on, our world, will seem like squalor, to the people, in 12 years time. Last time, the 1890’s Depression, had them thinking squalor and war, would be their lot, for a long time, 45 years of the Great Stagnation, has blinded us to the kind of change we see, for example in the second industrial revolution, in China and India, in the third industrial revolution in the whole world.
  I’ve rattled on, but it’s hard to get across, how punctuated evolution works, Stagnation, followed by synergistic advances, leading to breakthrough booms. Horseless carriages, to electric driverless vehicles; electricity and lighting, to photovoltaic, transistorised electricity and lighting; high rise construction, to 3D printed groundscrapers. It’s hard, to wrap our minds, around so much change, after so much Stagnation, in the developed countries, for so long, to go, into so much advance, in such a short period, of time.
  See Tony Seba’s Clean Disruption and the Swanson curve, graph.

• The great thing about this disruption is it is bottom up. Behind the meter storage will be next, no doubt in my mind. I'm not as bullish on EVs until they come down in price. Most people can and will hang onto their ICE until it needs to be replaced. I'm even less bullish in AVs.

• You’d be right about electric vehicles, in Australia, 0.2% of new vehicles, 2% globally, last year, 45% of Norwegian automobile sales. Up from 1 million to 3 million last year, they’re expensive, but cost 1/10th as much to maintain, as well as 1/5th as much to propel, so life cycle cost, is already good enough. Soon they’ll be the same price, as an internal combustion engine vehicle, then areas will ban ICE vehicles. They won’t want lung disease and noise, as to automatic vehicles, the trials go on, 5G networks, will be keystone.
  First on the highways, then driverless only lanes, the safe lane, flock network behaviour, no sharp acceleration or deceleration. Go to sleep, read a book, have something to eat or drink, watch TV, hit the web, same as when your on, a driverless train. Drinking alcohol, sleeping, texting are quite a bit safer in a driverless vehicle, than a drunk’s vehicle, as he falls asleep, from the combination of the booze, drugs and the psychiatric medication, as the ice wears off, from a 3 day bender. I don’t drive, so I look forward to not having, to pay for the driver, fuel, maintenance, on quiet, smooth bus trips, on the highway, maybe I could even, get some legroom, like I do, on an aircraft.
  As to ground up, electric vehicles, are a lot like that, in China, there are tens of millions of electric bicycles, electric motor bikes. When a family, gets a solar bucket, it transforms their lives, roll out the solar panel, plug in the battery. Plug in the smartphone, tablet, put on the LED light, turn on the fan in the daytime, it moves them, towards their electric bike and motor cycle. In a centuries time, there’ll be a 4th industrial revolution, from university to industry, takes about a century, Maxwell, Faraday, to Ford, Edison; then photoelectric effect, to screens, power. Next vacuum energy, quantum computing, wormholes, 2,120’s, the 4th industrial revolution.
  Of course we’ll have to go through the Grand Depression, as market saturation hits, in the 2030’s, hopefully basic minimum income, space colonisation, will soften the blow.