Been following this with interest as has been many years watching the integration of solar into domestic and commercial applications since it’s incentivised introduction by the Government all those years ago.
Many people paid big money on residential installations, believing the Government’s pledges on credits and returns to “cut their power bills in half”.
Unfortunately hasn’t ever been the case here, and there was much fine print regarding what the conditions/guarantees were to receive those credits…
Some of the very first rebates (carrots) were offered as high as 19c per Kw returned, but like any government promises, these dwindled over the years and some people are getting as little as 4c these days.
At least they are actually getting something in return, as there’s also a vast majority of systems out there where people are getting absolutely zero for their systems, which has resulted in quite a few people removing them when they are hit with breakdowns/maintenance bills to fork out on something that gives them nothing in return.
Rebates were only offered for the “original purchaser/property owner installers.
Once you sold the property, the rebates were reduced to the much lower price, or removed completely for the new home buyer.
So much for solar systems “adding value to your property”.
This discouraged many of these people from fitting solar to their next houses, having to fork out money for another system that was only going to return them much less than the last system that they never got their money back from selling their house.
When I was working at my local pub for a few years as a maintenance/handyman/yardie…… part of my job was recording the details of their solar input/output twice a day, morning and night.
The previous owners had installed a twin 40 Kw 3 phase system, which put enough power back into the grid to run half of the town, yet never received a single cent in return and the new owner required to maintain the system out of their own pocket.
Various emails, inspections, costs and couldn’t get anything in return due to the “conditions” of the contract stating that it was a commercial agreement with the previous owner and not transferable to subsequent owners.
Pretty poor when the solar system and rebates/billing information shown to the new owner was one of their major selling points for the building.
Our largest issue with the power readings was through the main provider Western Power.
Our detailed meter readings were proving that we were somehow paying for portions of the power that the solar was feeding back INTO the grid!
Even though everything connected through up to date digital meters on power into the property and the solar system digital meters feeding back, nothing added up on either side and was costing the publican a fortune.
Apparently our usage records showed power draw was higher in the early mornings when we had full sun, when pub was not open, all A/C, lights/tills/TAB machines etc. turned off, no guests upstairs and the kitchen closed………than 9:00 on a Friday night without any sunlight, with everything turned on, full kitchen/dining room/TAB/2 bars/live band playing etc. etc.
Even when Covid lockdowns hit, we completely shut down everything possible, including equipment that hadn’t been turned off in their lifetime, such as the huge Glass door Jarrah Bar Fridges, Coolrooms, Kitchen freezers, compressors, various hot water systems etc etc……. there was absolutely nothing running for a couple of months, completely shut down other than the publican and her daughter living upstairs…… and their power bills all INCREASED the whole time!
Was a clusterfck of a time and thankfully the old pub has just been onsold to new people, and no, the publican isn’t getting a house with solar power after moving out 
