Riddells Creek Sustainability

Hi all (from Erik Zimmerman of Beyond Building – see good news number 2 in particular – if you can do this and haven’t already registered as such let us know ASAP)

This week the planets have lined up for us on the solar neighbourhoods program.  This is a good thing after some testing weeks…

Good news number 1.  The issues holding up approvals from the Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts (previously the Australian Greenhouse Office – AGO) have been resolved.  They will commence processing the forms from next week.  As you can imagine this has been quite a relief…

Hence the project plans issued on the web site previously remain current.

Good news number 2.  The Hepburn neighbourhood was launched last night and the web site will go live on Sunday evening.  Hepburn is one of a number of emerging ’sponsored neighbourhoods’ where people are paying the entire $8,895 and then receiving the $8,000 back from the government post installation.  Belgrave neighbourhood (another sponsored neighbourhood) will go live on Wednesday the 16th of April.

Good news number 3. I can now formally announce that the Hampton neighbourhood will be sponsored by the Melbourne Sustainability Fund.  This means that the Fund has come up with the capital ($) to purchase the solar panels and pay for the installation.  As you can imagine the 6 solar neighbourhoods require funding of almost $2 million and that has been quite a challenge!

Good news number 4.  We will be engaging in a trial of smart meters in conjunction with Red Energy and Centurion….  There are some big advantages of these ‘next generation meters’

- You will never have again have someone entering your private space to check the meter because the ‘beam it back’ via GPS

- The smart meters are by far the best option for the future feed in tariff (because they can cover both ‘net’ and ‘gross’ options).

- You can switch your solar system on 6 weeks earlier because our own electricians will be trained to install the meters (saving the considerable delays in working with retailers and booking truck appointments with the electricity distributors (Powercor and Alinta)

- You can access your electricity production (from the solar system) via the internet

Gross meter option (AGL) = you get paid for 100% of the electricity you produce (a 1 KW system on a typical house @ the proposed 60 cent feed in tariff  = $720/year in additional income)

Net meter capability (Origin, Victoria Energy, Tru etc) = you get paid only for what you export to the grid (and this is minimal given the fridge and other appliances will use most of the electrciaity the solar system produces – under a ‘net’ scenario a 1 KW system on a typical house @ the proposed 60 cent feed in tariff = $100/year in additional income).    It is worth considering whether you would like to participate in this smart meter trial.  Let me know.

Clearly the government need to agree to a ‘gross’ system in order to take advantage of this capability and this is still very uncertain. however it has been proposed by the clean energy council.

For those of you in Ballarat please keep the evening of the 23rd of April free as we will be briefing in the above trial and providing an update to you.  Nick Lanyon from BREAZE will co-ordinate this meeeting.  We may also have good news on the Powercor fees….

So may the planets remain in this formation for the forseeable future!

Thanks everyone for your support during the delays.

Erik