Page 3022 - Week 07 - Thursday, 30 June 2011
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individual micro household ones. Such installations therefore take longer to come on line, remembering that the medium category itself only commenced in March this year.
Allowing unfettered access to the remaining medium cap by microgenerators would quickly erode the remaining cap and largely exclude from participation the very parties the category was introduced to benefit. Unfortunately, the inequities do not stop there.
The amendments proposed provide that any currently eligible applications not connected to the electricity grid by 1 September 2011 will only be eligible for a payment of 75 per cent of the current premium rate rather than the full 100 per cent announced by the government. I am advised that there are already 1,540 inspection bookings up to the end of August 2011 and more than 1,900 further applications are being processed.
As members would know, the ACT operates the most comprehensive safety inspection regime in the country. Installations are inspected for both safety and grid compatibility and any faults detected are subject to revisions and re-wirings as necessary before connection takes place. To expect the inspectors to give their careful attention to about 3,400 sites by 1 September 2011 imposes an unreasonable burden. Any of those installations, through no fault of their own, requiring additional work that takes them beyond the September deadline, under Mr Rattenbury’s amendments, miss out and have to accept a lesser payment. Equitable? Fair? Hardly!
So what transition period is being offered by the Greens amendment bill? If we accept Mr Rattenbury’s amendments, how long before industry soaks up this extension and asks for even more? The answer, I fear: not long at all. Even if the take-up rate dropped by 80 per cent from the high point we saw just prior to the scheme’s closure, we will see the remaining cap reached in approximately nine months. Most likely, we will have reached the cap again by Christmas 2011. And that will be to the exclusion of any medium, as I mentioned. This offers no transition. It just offers another gallop towards a new cap and by every player in the market, not just local businesses.
The micro scale feed-in tariff has, in the government’s view, run its course. I note here that there is access to a one-to-one tariff contract from at least one retailer in the ACT. For those residents wishing to install PV on their rooftop, there remains significant commonwealth support for PV2. This offers a reasonable return on investment and an effective hedge against any future electricity price rises. Of course, the ACT’s lowest electricity prices in the country mean a slightly lower return for local PV owners than across the border, but that is a benefit to all consumers. Eventually, about 8,000 ACT households will be grid-connected through the micro category, and that is no bad thing. The micro category scheme has been a success.
But the government has long expressed its policy desire to transition to larger scale, more cost-effective renewable energy generation. I remind members that I have already advised of my intention to bring forward legislation later this year for that very purpose. Just today, my directorate released a discussion paper for industry on
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