The solar industry is not often on the streets holding placards. For the past few years, they have been two busy. When they have, in NSW for instance, it was over the sudden and arbitrary removal of a solar support scheme. Now, however, they are back on the streets in Melbourne, this time because of a newly introduced support scheme.
What’s going on?
Last week, Solar Insiders invited Solar Victoria CEO Stan Krpan to discuss the issue, and allowed him to defend the structure of the Victoria solar rebate, a $1.3 billion proposal to ensure that another 650,000 homes have rooftop solar.
There are some great things about this scheme – the long term vision, the determination to make solar more affordable to more people, the focus on rental and apartment dwellers, low income housing and battery storage.
But there’s a lot that has gone wrong too. As we saw in the public demonstration last week, many solar businesses have run out of work, sidelined by the complexity of the scheme, and the fact that it is actually putting a constraint on supply, and many have been left without any business.
In this week’s episode, we hear from Smart Energy Council CEO John Grimes, and Nigel Morris reports back from the protest and his discussions with many people involved, and from both sides of the policy fence. You can also read Nigel’s blog here.
Is there a solution? There must be. We suggest increasing the quota to match recent deployment levels, before gradually winding down the numbers, and the eligibility barrier (income limit) as well. This way, the market does not artificially shrink, there is still a contestable market, and ultimately the scheme focuses on those who need it most.
Surely, there is room for compromise here.
You can find previous episodes of the Solar Insiders podcast here or on your favourite podcast platform.
This post was published on July 29, 2019 11:34 am
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A couple of points seeing you are inviting comment.
Firstly, I thought the previous interview with Stan Krpan was better than the contribution from John Grimes. Stan was straight forward and clear in his answers, whereas John was more emotional and disjointed. I appreciate he feels stressed from his point of view, but trying to figure out his main complaint was difficult. By the end of it I thought he was mostly upset that older customers were struggling with the new technology.
It was unclear if those smaller businesses in distress had applied for the scheme and failed, or not bothered to work through the process. I have no idea how many tried to use the scheme.
If there is a case to be made, it needs clarity so we can understand the dot points.
One last thing for Nigel. The last State election in Victoria was not won on the new scheme as a bribe. It was lost by an Opposition that fought one of the most inept elections ever seen in this state. Even down to the point where the Fin Review reported the Liberal party room conceding they had no chance right at the start of the campaign.
Taking a political slant like that is not the way to encourage engagement with the Victorian government if that is what our intention is.
How can the application process be too hard and also too quickly taken up?
They can’t both be true. Would be nice to hear from customers who got the rebate and businesses who were successful. How did they mange it?
What about the poor bastards that have lost everything in this cockup?