SUN THING DOESN’T ADD UP
Ageing infrastructure means residents miss out on power cash
“UNPRECEDENTED” demand for rooftop solar panels combined with ageing infrastructure in Geelong is leaving customers locked out from sending power back to the grid and accessing lucrative tariffs.
As residents flock to the cleanenergy alternative, the region’s ageing electricity infrastructure — much of which was built for one-way power flow — is reaching capacity in some areas, preventing new customers exporting power and receiving payments for doing so.
“UNPRECEDENTED” demand for rooftop solar panels combined with ageing infrastructure in Geelong is leaving customers locked out from sending power back to the grid and accessing lucrative tariffs.
As residents flock to the clean energy alternative, the region’s ageing electricity infrastructure — much of which was built for one-way power flow — is reaching capacity in some areas, preventing new customers exporting power. Under Victoria’s general renewable energy feed-in tariff (FiT) scheme, solar panel owners can send excess electricity back to the power grid and receive payments for doing so.
A solar installer who asked to remain anonymous said the average household would miss out on about $500 annually if they couldn’t export power due to old infrastructure.
The installer also said they’d seen a recent increase in “knock-backs” from Geelong electricity provider Powercor to households seeking pre-approval to export power.
Powercor, which provides energy to the western half of Victoria, acknowledged infrastructure in some areas had reached capacity and was unable to support new customers sending power back to the grid.
The provider said threequarters of customers received approval to export the full amount of power applied for, while 12 per cent were approved to export a reduced amount and 13 per cent unable to export back to the grid.
“Around 19 per cent of Powercor customers have connected rooftop solar and each year we are seeing unprecedented growth in the number of solar panel installations, including in the Geelong region,” a spokeswoman said. “Geelong experienced 15 per cent growth in solar panel installations from 2018 to 2019, and 17.5 per cent of households in the city now have solar panels.”
Powercor was moving to improve capacity through new substations and infrastructure upgrades in Waurn Ponds the spokeswoman said.
“In addition, we have proposed to spend $61 million over the next five years to upgrade the Powercor network and allow most customers to export up to 5kVA from their solar PV system,” she said.
“We expect this investment will unlock over 95 per cent of solar exports that are otherwise constrained.
“We are working closely with the state government to look at a range of options for how we can enable solar in the meantime.”