The Alternative Technology Association (ATA), an Australian not-for-profit organisation promoting sustainable technology and practice, is seeking 12 months or more of data on grid connect solar power systems to use as evidence to support suggested alterations to the proposed Feed-in-Tariff legislation in the Victorian State Parliament.
The request:
“If you are a Victorian solar PV owner, we need your help! The Victorian Feed-in Tariff legislation is currently being debated in State Parliament and ATA, along with a number of other environment and interest groups, is seeking to improve the scheme.
One of the critical design aspects of the proposed scheme involves solar households being paid via a credit off their electricity bills (as opposed to a direct cash payment).
Most worryingly, it is proposed that any solar household still in credit at the end of any 12 month billing period will have this credit ‘extinguished’.
The State Government maintains that the credit aspect of the proposed Feed-in Tariff is ‘irrelevant to the overwhelming majority of people’ who own solar systems.
The ATA however believe that there may be a significant number of ATA members and other solar households who will be negatively affected by the credit aspect of the scheme.
As such, we are seeking to find out how many Victorian solar households are likely to be in ‘credit’ at the end of any 12 month billing period.
If you have good data on both the output of your system and your average household consumption, we would love to hear from you. Specifically, we need:
– output of your PV system over a 12 month period
– average annual household electricity consumption
– your export in kWh to the electricity grid per day averaged over a 12 month period. (Alternatively, the amount in kWh you consume in the household during the day would be of benefit).
– your estimate of any likely credit that would remain at the end of a 12 month billing period.
We will be looking to use this information for advocacy purposes in the next two weeks. As such, we are asking that members email the information above to damien@ata.org.au *by no later than 5pm, Friday 24th April 2009*.
We thank you for your support on this issue and should you have any queries, please do not hesitate to contact Damien at the email address above.”
