10 years ago the average solar system in our region was around 1.5kW (or 6 panels). In the past six months, the average size of new systems in Macedon Ranges has been a whopping 4.8kW (19 panels) whilst in Mount Alexander it’s been 4.1kW (17 panels). The main reasons for change have been the 90% plunge in solar prices over the decade and the desire of many people to do something about their CO2 emissions.
Feed-in tariff rip-off
When new solar owners export power back to the grid they get 6.2 cents per kWh from their retailer. The electricity then goes into the neighbours’ houses and the retailer earns 25 cents for the exact same electrons. Unfair? You bet it is! It’s why solar owners are finding ways of shifting more of their power use to daytime so they can use their own solar power at no cost and export less of it.
North, east, west: who cares?
One of the barriers to solar in the past was the small size of available roof space. In some cases shading made it difficult. In others, small areas of north-facing roof caused householders to either give up or only put on four to six panels, hardly enough to make a difference. Today, we have micro inverters to cope with shading and we can put panels on several parts of your roof – facing north, east and west – using only one inverter. These changes are done at little or no extra cost and with little loss of solar power output.
When too many Info Meetings are not enough
People seem to like our Info Meetings. Over 200 came to the first few sessions we had in Castlemaine, Maldon and Newstead. We’ve now scheduled three more sessions at the Castlemaine Senior Citizens Hall on Tuesday 11 August, Thursday 20 August and Wednesday 26 August, all at 5.00-6.30pm. Macedon Ranges readers should pencil in 21st October, the date of our first Info Session in Kyneton.
