Strawbale House

According to news.com.au reporting about the Australian federal budget for 2009, Australia will be spending up to $1.5 billion over the next nine years to build up to 4 massive solar power plants. Plans for these solar power plants are on a scale the world has never seen before.

These massive solar power plants could produce up to 1000 megawatts of electricity. These solar power plants my be either photo voltaic plants or solar thermal power plants.

Finally the K. Rudd government seems to be honouring one of their election promises by supporting clean energy production.

Disappointingly up to $2 billion will be spent on building conventional coal power plants incorporating “Clean Coal” technology that doesn’t yet exist. NeeravBhatt has given a nice analogy for the term “Clean Coal” in one of his updates on Twitter by highlighting that “Clean Coal” is a bit like “Friendly Murder”.

The more I think about the state of solar electricity generation and government support the more I understand that gross metered feed in tariffs are a really powerful means to increase the uptake of solar panels amongst the public.

The current scheme of RECS is severely flawed as it doesn’t really increase the uptake of solar power in Australia. Currently mostly people that are already interested in solar power generation are installing photo voltaic panels and using the RECS to help with the upfront cost. The problem with this is that the RECS embody all the environmental benefits for the next 15 years and once sold, the owner of the solar system really can not claim any environmental benefits for the system.

Basically by selling the RECS the owner has sold his benefit most likely to a coal or gas powered electricity provider and as such all the electricity produced by the solar system for the next 15 years carries all the green house gases and other environmental nasties (coal sludge anyone?) that the power station is off-setting when it purchased the RECS.

The current plan of the government to offer 5 times the amount of RECS form the middle of the year only makes this situation worse as any solar electricity system is still producing the same amount of clean energy but when selling the RECS the power stations actually get to claim 5 times the offset for  their nasties than is actually being offset.

Looking at it in this way, really the only one benefiting from the new scheme are the big power generators. The public and the environment will suffer as a result of the introduction of these “phantom” RECS.

A gross metered feed in tariff on the other hand measures the actual amount of clean energy being produced and by having a gross metered feed in tariff a whole new sector of clients will be attracted to solar electricity generation. A gross feed in tariff makes it a lot easier to look at solar electricity generation from an investment perspective as it is relatively easy to work out how long the pay back period would be and what return on investment would be possible.

So please, anyone caring about the enviroment and wishing to see a dramatic increasee in power generation from renewable sources should sign the petition at http://www.feedintariff.com.au/ to show the government that we do care and that we want them to fulfill on their election promise to look after the environment.

During the weekend before last, Rosalba and I attended a course put on by the Rainbow Power Company titled “Living with Solar”

The course covered pretty much anything to do with solar power generation, from solar panels and cable sizing to battery care.

The course was presented in an easy going two days and aimed at giving anyone a good understanding on solar power generation and it’s impacts on your life style.

One of the most interesting things I picked up from the course is that you can still use a bread maker but you just need to be careful when you use it. As a bread maker uses quite a lot of electricity you should only use it when you have excess energy being generated by your solar panels and your battery bank is already full.

Personally I believe that this course is very worth while for anyone interested in generating electricity from the sun, be that a grid connect system or an autonomous remote area power system (RAPS).

Project Better Place is planning on bringing electric cars and a charging network to Australia by  2012.

In a deal unveiled in Melbourne, international company Better Place plans to team up with AGL Energy and Macquarie Capital Group to set up a network of “charging spots” and “battery exchange stations” to power electric vehicles in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne.

Shai Agassi, chief executive officer of Better Place, said he hoped Australia would prove that electric cars can work anywhere and that the technology to support electric cars is available now.

Better Place plans to set-up a network of charging spots, to top up batteries, that would be located in places where cars park, including home garages, shopping centres and office car parks.

Additionally, on the outskirts of city centres and on freeways, “battery switching stations” would be built for trips longer than 161 kilometres.

Mr Agassi said Better Place wants to to build the infrastructure first, while the company was dealing with car manufacturers to produce the battery-run cars.

“You can’t sell cell phones before you have the towers,” he said.

Thanks to Jess at Sustainable Suburbia for blogging this and linking to the article in The Age news paper.

Some of you may remeber the post I have written in August about a different way to finance a solar power system by basically giving the power company the right to place their own solar panels onto your roof and you then buy the electricity generated by these solar panels at a slightly higher cost.

This way you are able to generate a large part of your electricity need from the sun without needing to pay for a large upfront cost.

In August I also talked about how such deals seemed not to be available in Australia.

I am happy to report that a similiar deal has now become available in Australia from at least one company named Earth Utility.

Earth Utility is putting a slightly different spin on this type of deal though. As Earth Uility is not an electricity supplier you don’t pay more for your electricity and you get the same benefits on your electricity bill you would get if you own the solar power system outright.

Of course the solar power system is not provided free of charge but at a modes $75 per quarter (source) your savings on your electricity bill are probably more than paying for the quarterly cost for the solar power system.  As a bonus you even own the system after 20 years of service.

If you have been wanting to get a solar power system on your roof but have not been able to to afford it until now, I encourage you to have a look at Earth Utility and see if their way of financing a solar power system would suit you.

Earth Uility also provides similar types of financing options for solar hot water systems.

 Yesterday, Rosalba and I, met Shayne from Alternative Energy Solutions to start the process of working out the size of our solar power system. Shayne performed an energy audit with us by going through every room on our plan and working out what electrical appliances we’ll be using.

Based on our responses Shayne reckons that on average we’ll be using up to 8.5 kWh per day with an average usage of about 7.8 kWh. Apparently this is at the high end of the modest range of daily energy demand.

Shayne has told us about a similar system he installed recently which was priced at $52,000 (Australian) before any potential rebates we might be eligible. That’s about what we expect to invest into our solar system, so that didn’t come as a huge shock.

To generate enough electricity for our use Shayne has calculated that we need to install 12 solar panels of 165 W each and that we need a battery bank of 1300 Ah at 48V.

Shayne also explained that some appliances use an extraordinary amount of electricity and we should stay clear of them if we can. Appliances such as hair dryers, irons, electric toasters, and bread makers use large amounts of electricity which make the solar system more expensive than it is if you can do without them.

For example, if you keep your bread maker you basically end up spending an additional $12,000 on your solar system to be able to run it.

According to Shayne  a lot of parts for a solar system will get more expensive with the introduction of an emissions trading scheme as demand for alternative energy solutions will increase dramatically.

Installing a solar power systems is not cheap as most people interested in the idea are already aware of. Solar power systems, especially grid connected systems, pay for themselves over time, but a relatively large up-front investment is needed to reap the benefits of a solar power system.

An article on TreeHugger published today talks about a different way of financing a solar power system by using a service model instead of an asset or ownership model. This service model means that a service provider installs, owns, and maintains the solar power system on your house and you buy the electricity generated from the service provider.

Major benefits, as I see them, are:

• No large up-front installation cost which makes solar power a feasible option for many more people.
• No worries about maintenance as your service provider looks after the system for you.
• You are not dependant on government handouts rebates to be able to afford solar power.

The article on TreeHugger seems to apply mainly to the USA as it does not contain any information about any such service outside the US of A. Nevertheless the idea described in the article is interesting and merits further thought and hopefully duplication in Australia.

Please leave a comment if you have any information or links to alternative ways of obtaining a solar power system that apply to Australia as this sounds very interesting to me.  I am sure such alternate ways of financing a solar power system would increase the up-take of solar power in Australia again after the damper the Australian government has dealt with the introduction of the means testing for the solar rebate.

For more reading check out the article on TreeHugger.

Rosalba and I have joined the Alternative Technology Association (ATA) a couple of months ago because we thought that this would help us decide on what alternative energy system we will incorporate into our new home.

The ATA have published a Solar Panel Buyers Guide in their October-December 2007 ReNew print publication. The really nice thing is that the ATA have now made this article available for free and in full on their website at http://www.ata.org.au/renew/renew-101-solar-panel-buyers-guide.

A few of the things that were mentioned in the article that I found interesting or helpful are:

• All solar panels currently available will produce more energy than they use over their lifetime including initial production.
• Some solar panels come with up to 25 years of manufacturer’s warranty
• Currently BP Solar, Conergy and PV Solar Energy manufacture their solar panels in Australia.

If you are currently thinking about installing solar panels on your home this Solar Panel Buyers Guide is well worth a read.

Additionally if you are interested in alternative technologies you might be interested in some other articles on the ATA website, so go have a look.

With our decision not to connect our future home to the electricity grid I have started thinking about ways of making the most of the electricity that we will collect with our solar panels. Unfortunately I currently have a number of computers that that are acting as various servers and are therefore constantly on which is obviously consuming a bit of electrical.

Also I do believe in building in redundancy where ever you can, especially with computers and hard drive storage. Over the years I have had too many hard drives fail to trust a single hard drive with my data. So until recently I had a large computer acting as a file server utilising 4 hard drives in a redundant set-up (RAID 5 for those that are interested). This computer was using 80W on average or 0.35A when switched on.

As this computer has started to fail (video card is no longer working) a few weeks ago, I had to decide what to do about fixing it. There where a number of options that went through my head with the seemingly easiest being to just replace the video card. Due to the age of the computer I haven’t been able to find a fitting video card.

While trying to decide how to progress I realised that it was the right time to look at less energy intensive options that still give me all the functionality I wanted. There are a number of network attached external hard drive (also known as NAS) available with most of the cheaper units only providing a single hard drive.

Nevertheless I found a model made by Western Digital (WD) called the “MyBook World Edition II” that was less than $500 and included two 500GB hard drives that can be set-up in a redundant manner. That by itself almost made my decision but what really pushed me over the line was that the box itself actually runs of 12V supplied by a power pack.

Measuring the energy consumption of my new “MyBook” has confirmed that when plugged into a 240V power socket the power consumption is only one fifth (16W) of the old computer and according to my measurement with the box turned of the power pack consuming 9w or nearly half, I am hoping that the MyBook would consume less than 10W plugged directly into 12V solar system.

Now the change of the computer to this external hard drive is only one step towards saving energy but it’s the first opportunity since we have made our decision to build our new home and included an off-grid solar installation. I am sure there will be changes that we will make over the next 2 years to help us save some more electricity and I am happy to keep you all posted on any further changes we are making.

I am also aware that this is probably quite a dry post for most of my normal readers and I promise there won’t be to many of these to come, but please do let me know if this post was actually interesting to at least some of you.

The Channel 7 Sunrise team have started another petition to stop the means testing of the solar rebate in Australia. The Sunrise petition already has over 30,000 signatures so it looks like this petition will make an impression.

If you would like the means test for the solar rebate to be scrapped, please sign the Channel 7 Sunrise petition. I believe you should sign this petition even if you have already signed a previous petition for this purpose.

The Sunrise petition can be found at http://sunrisefamily.com.au/current/petition/

Also please do tell your friends about the Sunrise petition and get them to sign it as well, if the feel the means testing should be scraped.