Policy

City of Adelaide solar initiative will remove upfront costs and provide payment plans for city's low-income and rental households, in effort to extend rooftop PV uptake – and savings – beyond the traditional market.

How can public acceptance of utility projects be increased? Policymakers want to allow citizens to invest in such projects, but the focus is insufficient. Citizens want more than just financial benefits.

When a now defunct solar company installed non-genuine solar panels on nearly 200 homes in regional NSW and Qld, Greenbank – the aggregator of the solar credits for those panels – stepped in to right the wrong, despite having no hand in the blame. The question, now, is who will stop it from happening again?

State government acts to make it quicker and easier for Victorian households and small businesses wishing to install rooftop solar, with Bill that will reduce the wait for connection by up to 55 days.

Australians hate their energy utilities more than most other countries. That poses a big challenge for the traditional utilities trying to break into the behind-the-metre market inside homes and businesses.

An online petition calling on Australia’s federal and state governments to make rooftop solar mandatory for all new-build houses has attracted nearly 12,000 signatures in just one week.

Victorian Life Saving clubs can now apply for state government grants to install solar PV after the launch of a $500,000 funding program this week.

How equity crowd-funding reform – if done appropriately could open the floodgates to the community energy sector.

Blueprint for NSW town of Uralla says getting to majority renewables can be relatively easy, and save a lot of money. Getting to 100% renewables, however, will be harder. But it seems lots of towns want to try.

A City of Sydney-backed $1.2m Environmental Upgrade Agreement will allow owners of 1967 Reader's Digest building to fund energy efficiency upgrade that will slash its energy use by 60%.

City of Sydney, Property Council call on AEMC to change rules governing electricity supply to incentivise shared, local distributed energy generation.

Attempt by Abbott government to stop Clean Energy Finance Corporation co-financing rooftop solar is likely to make rooftop solar a lot more more expensive for those homes and businesses who have yet to install the technology, and who cannot afford to buy the systems outright.

South Australia government doubles funding available for City of Adelaide battery storage initiative, potentially injecting 600kWh of storage into CBD.

Tasmanian renewables group calls for state government intervention after a series of cuts to solar feed-in tariffs causes market to contract.

Australian networks are also penalising solar households, now it looks like they will do the same with those that add battery storage. The trend among some electricity networks to penalise or discourage the uptake of rooftop solar by imposing fixed tariffs or additional fees is now extending to battery storage, with one network accused of […]

Victoria regulator wants minimum feed-in-tariff paid for surplus rooftop solar output fed back into grid be cut dramatically. Victorian energy regulator the Essential Services Commission has recommended that the minimum feed-in-tariff paid for surplus rooftop solar output fed back into the grid be cut to 5c/kWh from the current level of 6.2c/kWh in 2016. The […]