Perth: Meeting notes – 20th May 2009
Travis Hargreaves treated us all to a very interesting meeting with a detailed discussion of Solar PV systems to a crowd of at least 24. Travis is a Sustainable Living Consultant and has several clients for whom he has recommended solar PV systems as well as other changes to their lifestyle (especially saving power rather than generating it) to make it more sustainable. Travis is obviously very committed to his work and closely follows all his clients including monitoring their PV system outputs.
Topics covered were:
Feed in Tariff (FIT) - its nearly here but don’t expect an implementation until the end of this year at the earliest – the model still isn’t finalised although budget amounts have been allocated. Contact Peter Collier – Minister For Energy – to encourage him to push on with developing a good system – hopefully backdated for those of us who already have systems installed. One of the issues is with metering – apparently single phase smart meters can be re-programmed to measure Gross PV power, but 3 phase smart meters will need an additional meter.
REC’s – Travis explained the REC’s system and reasons for keeping your REC’s rather than cashing them in. He also explained the change in the rebate scheme, when each PV system will be allocated 5 x the current REC allocation instead of getting the $8000 rebate (for 1kW). So to get any “rebate” you have to cash in all the REC’s – making REC’s cheaper and more easily available for the polluters. The amount you get will depend on the price of REC’s. I guess if the FIT comes in, there’s more chance you could keep the REC’s and still (eventually) get you outlay back in full ?
Power price rises – Travis explained that the future rises are still not completely defined but that it is likely basic prices will rise from 12.67c/unit to about 30c in 2 years.
System Payback – this is a complicated area depending on how much you pay, what price increases happen, whether you are on green power and/or smart power. As a ballpark figure though, Travis showed that a typical 1kW system in Perth, generating an average of 4.5kWh/day, the value of the power generated from July 1 would be:
| 1st 6 months | $131 |
| next 6 months | $156 |
| 2nd year | $397 |
| 3rd year | $448 |
| Total | $1132 |
.. and this is without the FIT scheme but is assuming the current $8000 rebate. So for a typical system net cost, the payback could be within 5-8 years – much better than the 20-30years of not so long ago.
Panel technologies – there was some discussion of the advantages of the different technologies – single crystal being the most efficient and taking up the least roof space, thin film having the least embodied energy and better shading + thermal characteristics but taking up 3 x the area. Typical areas are 6sqm for monocrystalline, 18sqm for thin film and somewhere in between for the range of polycrystalline.
Orientation – this was touched on very briefly, but even at the extreme of an East or West facing system, the loss from perfect north orientation was only 15%. A useful tool for calculating your situation including latitude (perth is listed as a default site), pitch and azimuth is at http://www.pvwatts.org/
Sorry if there are any errors in my notes.
See you at the next meeting on June 17th with David O’Driscoll of BrightGreen LED lighting.
Alan Benn
08 9271 1232
0429 101 703
