Four reasons rooftop solar will grow to dominate Australia’s electricity market
Four reasons rooftop solar will grow to dominate Australia’s electricity market
Rooftop solar coupled with batteries will be critical to help governments reach their emission reduction goals.
Residential solar is (unfortunately) one of the absolute least efficient ways to generate electricity (in terms of cost/MWh). The average cost of residential solar (US$184/MWh) is even higher than nuclear (US$168/MWh) (Lazard - Levelized Cost of Energy 2021).
By contrast, utility-scale solar is one of the most efficient ways to generate electricity (~US$35/MWh). Utility-scale solar and wind are the best bang-for-your-buck options currently, even without government subsidies.
If we're going to have any chance of slowing climate change, we have to use resources efficiently. Residential solar is the wrong direction. We have to address our energy need collectively, not individually.
4LCOE as of 2020 is $69 USD/MWh in Australia, which is the country the article is referring to.
That might be more expensive than large scale solar, but it's arguably offset by less of a reliance on transmission infrastructure and, combined with batteries, helps individuals have more resilience in the case of blackouts or other grid issues (which may be more common due to the effects of climate change).
11Hmm, that is significantly lower cost which definitely makes residential solar look more attractive compared to nuclear &etc, but it still doesn't outcompete utility-scale solar or wind. Speaking of which, this source seems completely one-sided as no comparisons are made with any other methods of electricity generation.
If residential solar cost is falling, what about other solar systems?
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Does that US$35/MWh include corporate profits and executive salaries, or is it just the cost of the energy generation itself? Because somewhere along the line the price the end user is charged gets inflated high enough that residential solar becomes the cheaper option.
7Well, of course there's going to be overhead costs at the point of delivery, but saving money for individual households is not the point.
The $ amount in this report is representative of the raw materials, manufacturing, logistics, installation and long-term maintenance required by each method. The point is to do a direct comparison between them (hence "levelized") so that we can judge which is the most effective.
Because material use and manufacturing are included, the $ amount represents environmental impact (at least in part). Based on this report, residential solar is a terrible use of resources. We could put the same resources to better use building more efficient large-scale systems.
So again, we have to solve these problems collectively, not individually.
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But that's cost, it is better for the environment and that's the point. It will also provide stability to household bills.
4In this report, everything is reduced to a $ amount so that a direct comparison can be made between methods. The amount is a representation of raw material/manufacturing/logistics/installation/etc, possibly reductive but intended to be all-encompassing. So, we can use that amount to judge where resources can be used most effectively - and the conclusion has to be that residential solar is a misuse of those resources.
The same materials and labor could be put to better use building large-scale systems, which would produce more electricity with less environmental impact from inneficiency.
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Yeah I'd much rather have it that individuals would get easy access to directly invest into larger scale solar parks or wind turbines near them.
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Is it weird of me to expect a country like Australia to have a lot of solar power already? Especially since it's so prevalent in the Netherlands where I grew up.
1Netherlands is at 4.2% solar to 14% in Australia.
15% of all Netherlands power is renewable/sustainable compared to 32% in Australia.
6I'm struggling to find a good source, but Australia also has the highest per capita rooftop solar (residential PV) rate in the world. Australia also leads per capita solar consumption overall, although Netherlands is second so they are doing well there too: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-solar?tab=chart&country=ESP~IND~PRT~GBR~NZL~CHN~AUS~USA~JPN~NLD
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It is already very common in Australia for homeowners. Not so much for renters or businesses, especially businesses that rent. There has been a drop in new solar recently as government subsidies and extra favourable feed in tariffs have been discontinued. But with dropping solar costs and rising energy costs, it still makes sense for most people.
3@hitmyspot @HerbalGamer It becomes a lot less surprising when you consider that Australia has a massive fossil fuel industry, including both coal and natural gas.
Or that they're willing to spend up big on lobbying.
Or that putting forward energy, emissions reduction, and mining tax policies have directly left to the downfall of several prime ministers and opposition leaders.
Or that Rupert Murdoch (of Fox News fame) owns a daily newspaper in every state capital, plus the only national newspaper, plus a 24-hour news channel.
Now, despite all that, there's still a decent amount of solar photovoltaic installed, varying from state to state.
In South Australia, it's a key part of the energy mix.
"South Australia has a well-developed solar photovoltaic (PV) industry. The state currently has over 2 gigawatts of solar PV generating capacity statewide, over one in three households have solar panels, and three large scale solar farms are in operation with a fourth under construction.
"Solar energy contributed to over 20% of electricity generated in the state in 2020–21."
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