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| screen capture: Australian Energy Market Operator |
Queensland, Australia briefly achieved a negative wholesale price for electricity in the middle of the day when its hot. How is that possible? Queensland has 1.1GW of solar panels installed over more than 350,000 buildings making rooftop solar the biggest power station in the state. As a whole Australia has 3.4GW on 1.2m buildings. Currently coal supplies Australia with 80% of its energy needs, but dropping photovoltaic prices has caused a boom in rooftop solar insulation. About 15% of solar customers are asking about their own storage equipment that would allow them to go off grid. Australia has high network costs (19¢kW/h and lots of sun, so it is leading the move to clean solar energy. Few coal companies are reporting profits, so the utility industry is fighting back. A Green MP in Victoria's parliament raised the issue of utility companies refusing solar system connections or charging high tariffs for connection. Twenty-two instances were cited where Powercorp, the local distributor, either rejected outright applications for connection of solar arrays or forced the array to be downsized. US utilities are taking a different approach to combatting consumer energy independence, and preempt the solar market by building their own commercial solar arrays. Solar generated electricity is becoming cheaper than natural gas generated electricity even in a time of plentiful gas supply in the United States. Australia projects that their cost of solar electricity will eventually drop to around 10¢kW/h! At that price even free coal could not compete with solar power. Believe US Person, a corporate thug like Mr. Peabody is not going to give it away; he would rather make residential solar installations costly or even illegal.
While writing of legalities: the Iowa Supreme Court, an influential juridical body in the Midwest, has ruled that purchase power agreements (PPA) are legal. Briefly, such an agreement allows a homeowner or a farmer or even a municipality to have installed a solar array that the installer will maintain. The owner gets to buy the electricity from the solar installation at a reduced price. The beauty of the deal is that there are no initial capital outlays for the owner since the array is owned by the installer. Utility companies do not like PPAs because to them the installer is acting like a utility by selling power. Being alert, Interstate Power and Light Company objected to the PPA Dubuque signed with installer Eagle Point. The Iowa Supreme Court disagreed with Interstate saying Dubuque would still be connected to their grid and still be customer, but perhaps not such a large one. In their view Eagle Point was not a 600 lb gorilla that had cornered Dubuque officials and beat them over the head with cornstalks until they signed on the dotted line. Indeed IPL lost 600,000kW/h in sales since Dubuque turned on their rooftop solar panels. 23 states now permit PPAs and Iowa's ruling is expected to influence the law in Minnesota and Wisconsin That is called free market, my friend.