The solar industry is a fast developing and constantly changing beast, similar to the heyday of personal computer uptake from the late nineties to the naughties.
While computer evolution has slowed down somewhat (I’m still on my 5-year-old computer now and it’s still zipping along after replacing the battery) solar has the same fast evolution that computers once had, due, no doubt, to all the smart kids flocking to work in solar R&D and manufacturing.
With all this change we’ve got the same solar accreditation we’ve had for a very long time. Not only is it out of date it is fundamentally flawed.
There are many things that need to be changed within the accreditation scheme, which unfortunately has now even poisoned the standards related to solar. Here is list of the most egregious errors and flaws in the current accreditation scheme:
That’s just problems that have come out of the standards – but there’s a big problem with the standards themselves. The fundamental flaw with the accreditation scheme is the separation of battery/off grid training and tickets and solar tickets.
There is absolutely no good reason why they can’t be rolled into the same ticket, as the technologies are meant to be part of single system and consumer thinking now includes both whenever they think solar. Would it make sense to do a roadworthy on the wheels of a car separately?
It is already the case today that every solar installer in the country would be getting requests to install batteries and they’d be doing them with or without the tickets. Installations with the tickets means they’ve invested in a whole extra course, time off work and lost income.
Without a ticket means they’ve signed the battery off the day or week before OR they’ve got their mate, supervisor or one guy in the team to sign them all off. Time to roll this whole process into one.
The evolution of solar powers on -things have changed but the de-facto industry regulator, the Clean Energy Council, has moved with all the swiftness and up-to-datedness of elderly medieval clergymen.
In Australia solar started with off -grid systems, people on 200W or 500W off grid DC setups. These then started to grow into kilowatt class systems i.e. 1kW, 2kW 5kW.
Battery banks got bigger and more things in the home could be run off them. Lead acid evolved into sealed AGM and a step change has now occurred with a shift to Lithium ion technologies.
At the same time that systems got bigger the on-grid market started to get legs and by around 2007 it had far eclipsed the off grid market. Fast forward to 2016 and batteries started to be part of the equation for just about everyone considering solar.
Today companies that had never sold a battery and installers who had never installed one have got customers banging on doors with wads of cash in hand wanting to install a home battery.
Installations aren’t stopping and no one is turning down a doubling of sales revenue from customers who want a solar system AND a big battery.
In conclusion CEC battery and on-grid solar accreditation needs to be rolled into one course. And taking it a step further, solar accreditation really needs to be the responsibility of the experts in this space i.e. the state-based electricity regulators such as Energy Safe Victoria.
Given some 20% + of all Australian houses have a solar system all electricians should know how to install and deal with solar systems (with or without batteries).
Finally installing and dealing with solar and battery systems needs to be fully integrated into the apprenticeship programs to become a licensed sparkie.
Waiting for some common sense to save everyone time, money and to get more solar out there.
Matthew Wright and Paul Szuster are the principals of Pure Electric Solutions
This post was published on July 11, 2018 11:01 am
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If we trained electricians to actually understand electricity instead of instilling the fear of deregistration from not following the code, then we wouldn't need overly specific standards to be held to ransom by a foreign alleged standards agency running a government sponsored monopoly.
Over the years we have had myriad bodies charged by governments with the responsibility of looking into future industry trends and anticipating demand for different types of skills. Most have been woeful and we have a sorry history of getting caught with our pants down, panicking and bringing in loads of "skilled foreign workers" on visas to take jobs for which we should have had a ready supply of trained locals.
Anyone with an interest in regional economic development can see the two best prospects on the horizon for regional employment are renewable energy and land rehabilitation of disused mines as the coal mines close in line with falling demand. This author touches on demand for renewable energy technicians (I imagine wind is in the same boat). I am involved in trying to get an industry training program going for land rehabilitation (there is none despite the billions of dollars held by state governments against the mining industry's obligations for rehabilitating existing mines). The only RTO accredited to deliver Certificate III training in minesite rehabilitation is TasTAFE. I am now working with Qld Agricultural Training College as the training required relates primarily to environmental matters, but the inertia at the industry and governmental level is depressing.
Both industries can revive the fortunes of regional economies without the boom and bust and pillaging of the environment that has been experienced up to now.
Point 3. You mean 350 watt limit for micro's. No individual PV module outputs 350VDC, none!
Point1. Roof top isolators have only caused problems because of early bad quality and sparkies that didn't wire them correctly. There use is still contentious, but serve to stop workers from being zapped, even 120vdc can kill.
Over 90% of punters who enquire about batteries go very cold when they learn the price.
Not many homes require 30kw systems, but if the want them they can have them, just that grid feed will be limited to local network rules. Ausgrid allows 30kw feed in over 3 phases, 10kw on single.
You may have a point perhaps re: 600 and 1000vdc. But I will say this a 1000vdc arc is far harder to deal with.
And to add 30kw array's won't fit too many roofs and south orientation is only workable in the tropics unless you reverse pitch them to the north.