Electricity users who don’t have solar panels are paying $538 a year to subsidise Australians who are benefiting from green schemes, a government report says.
Rooftop photovoltaic solar panels typically cost about $6,500 to install, with those fortunate enough to afford them receiving financial help from their poorer neighbours.
Under a feed-in tariff scheme, households are given generous rebates from their electricity provider for putting energy back into the grid, with utility companies passing on these costs to consumers.
Electricity users who don’t have solar panels are paying $538 a year to subsidise Australians who are benefiting from green schemes, a government report says
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said it was unfair how consumers without solar panels were paying a third more a year on their power bills to subside those with household renewable energy.
‘Solar customers are paying, on average, $538 per year less than non-solar customers, suggesting that affordability concerns are most acute for those customers who have not (and possibly cannot) install solar PV,’ the consumer regulator’s Retail Electricity Pricing Inquiry report said.
The ACCC is recommending state governments fund premium solar feed-in schemes instead of electricity users.
It praised the Queensland Labor government’s approach and said other states should copy this policy on a ‘permanent basis’ as solar scheme offers finished.
Households are given rebates from their electricity provider for putting solar energy back into the electricity grid. The ACCC said it was unfair for power companies to pass these costs on
The ACCC calculated Australian household electricity bills had risen by 56 per cent during the past decade, when inflation was taken into account.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has promised to implement the recommendations of the report, which criticised a system whereby solar energy users are charged a different rate by their electricity provider for the renewable power they generate.
SolarQuotes, a small business which installs solar panels, said they typically cost $6,500 to install to generate three kilowatts of power, or roughly a fifth of the daily electricity use in a typical Australian house.
It calculated annual savings of $650 for power generated by sun energy.
Australian households spend about $1,700 a year on electricity bills, in New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland, consumer information group Canstar estimated.
Across the national energy market, the ACCC calculated that an average customer paid about $1,636 a year for electricity from the grid.
The federal government’s Australian Energy Regulator estimated residents in a three-bedroom without a pool would use 14.8 kilowatt hours of power a day.
The ACCC is recommending state governments fund premium solar feed-in schemes instead of electricity users