asmania has become the latest National Electricity Market state to raise the rate households are paid for the rooftop solar they send to the grid, in response to the fossil fuel driven hike in wholesale electricity prices up and down Australia’s east coast.
Tasmania FIT
On Friday, the Independent Tasmanian Economic Regulator announced an 11.88 per cent increase in standing offer prices for Aurora Energy residential and small business customers from 1 July 2022 to 30 June 2023. Where standing offers go, other offers tend to follow.
For solar households, the regulated minimum feed-in tariff rate in Tasmania for surplus solar energy exported to the mains grid in 2020/21 is 8.471 cents per kilowatt hour1; 9.4 per cent lower than the 2019-20 rate. It’s better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, but no doubt noses wouldn’t be turned up if a better feed-in tariff rate was available
Currently, Tasmania’s solar households receive 6.1c/kWh for the solar they export, but pay around 25c/kWh for electricity from the grid, which is mostly sourced from hydropower, but when dam levels fall too low – as they did for the first four months of this year – is generated by gas and diesel, or imported from mainland brown coal plants, when the link to the mainland is working.
A feed-in tariff of 12-15c would rapidly ramp up the solar industry in Tasmania. Added advantages of solar are that people would invest their own money and the electricity would be generated and used locally, not requiring new network infrastructure.
The Energy Minister is not ruling out increasing the solar feed-in tariff after it was slashed in 2013, or requesting other assistance from the Commonwealth in the short term.
On October 31, 2008, Tasmanian Minister of Energy & Resources began circulating a discussion paper on whether the use … Read more
