Riddells Creek Sustainability

From the BBE website:

From one of our members:

I did some investigation of the RECs relating to solar power through the office of the renewable energy regulator (www.orer.gov.au) regarding the value of RECs that are we sign over to Beyond Building see http://www.orer.gov.au/publications/photovoltaic.html . They work out being about 17 recs for our area (zone 4) for a 1 kw system which are worth about $36 to $40 each – total of about $680 (Calc – 1 kw x 1.185 (zone factor) x 15 (deeming period – 15 years is the most favourable) = 17.775 – round down to 17 Recs) – I spoke to a person call Matt Power who was very helpful 0262741196 of the renewable energy regulator.

There is also a site that monitors the value of RECs on the open market http://www.afma.com.au/scripts/nc.dll?AFMAV6.196862:STANDARD:394747943:pc=L6C1S2S13 and here for prices http://www.afma.com.au/scripts/nc.dll?AFMAV6.196862:STANDARD:394747943:pc=L6C1S2S132 . You will see this is about $44 to $57 per REC. This is higher because it covers the costs of mobs like beyond Energy getting together large quantities of RECs, which they then trade to power companies like Origin Energy. No one wants to by small lots of RECs. There are businesses out there who act as brokers. RECs are also created from solar hot water systems and solar hot water heat pumps. Matt Power was saying there is a fair bit of unconscionable behaviour out there were people are not aware of the value of RECs and who sign them over to their hot water our solar PV service providers without looking to closely at their value. It is only a few dollars to the consumer, but for retailers they add up. There are about 50,000 new solar hot water systems being sold a year at the moment. Interesting stuff.

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

There are now over 200 people on the “interested” list. From the questions sent to “interested” people the latest results are:

Yes we are willing to go ahead = 102
No not willing to go ahead = 14 (many gave no reason but the most common reasons included too expensive, increased mortgage rates has hit them too hard for the moment, etc)

That’s 116 respondents, 102 households ready to go!

That is an amazing and heartening response. Thank you everyone.

(From Erik Zimmerman) In other good news today I’m pleased to announce that we will be proceeding with a trial for smart meters. A consortium of partners including the electricity retailer Red Energy, Beyond Building and Centurion are involved. This will allow our consumers to get access to the next generation of meters (smart meters offer the best outcome for the feed in tariffs not to mention a time saving to switch on your solar system of 6 weeks! It’s also a great way of gathering data on the output of your system). More on this one shortly..

No word yet on the certification however there is plenty of activity behind the scenes to push it through.

In other news:

- We have a meeting On Thursday the 3rd of April to brief in Alinta (the grid owner in bayside Melbourne and McKinnon) and next week on April 10 Powercor (Ballarat grid). The aim will be to generate speed of implementation and make up for some lost time.

- We will be launching the Belgrave solar neighbourhood on April 16. This neighbourhood will include 2 schools and a library!

(from Erik Zimmerman) I waited until April 2 for this e-mail to avoid the April Fools jokes…. yes we have commenced installations and no I’m not joking!. Of course with our limitations re: certification and the PV rebate applications we can only commence installations where we do not need the $8,000 PV rebate approvals. Last week a house in Sandringham (see photo) and this coming weekend the Half Moon Bay Life Saving Club installation will commence.

This morning I spent some time with our electrical inspector and we visited each of the 7 installation sites on Sturdee Rd, Black Rock in preparation for the installations. I’ve now agreed on a fixed price for all of our pre-inspections.

I received confirmation this morning:

- Yes we are going with the 5 year warranty option on the Sunnyboy.
- We also expect to offer 5 years on our own inverter when they are available.

Erik Zimmerman
Beyond Building

Thank you

Thanks to everyone who has expressed an interest in the project and thanks to the many people who have sent such positive emails before and since the meeting on Wednesday. The project has now taken over our lives. We’ve had great conversations with people who feel empowered to do something positive about greenhouse gas emissions coming from their homes. Solar panel installation and energy efficiency go hand in hand

Who are we?

The three people (and environment groups) that are working in a voluntary capacity to try and bring this project to fruition are:

• Russell Best (on behalf of Riddells Creek Landcare; www.riddellscreeklandcare.org.au)
• Lyn Hovey (on behalf of Greening of Riddell), and
• Julie Macdonald (on behalf of Clarkefield and District Farm/Landcare)

Julie will be our official Neighbourhood Coordinator with Beyond Building if we get this scheme up and running.

Current situation

At the time of writing this email, 175 people have expressed interest in the project. 150-200 people attended the community meeting last Wednesday. Beyond Building (BB) has also been overwhelmed with responses from interested neighbourhoods. BB has established 31 groups already (50 people in each group). Another 170 groups across Australia are waiting to sign up. With so many groups interested, BB is spending virtually all its time getting finance and implementing those 31 projects. They told us on Wednesday “we are unable to open any new neighbourhoods until the finance is in place”. This effectively means that the $499 deal is no longer an option. We will now proceed on the basis that it is $895. However, low income households should still keep in contact with us, as we are investigating other means of raising the difference in price and government green loans are about to come on to the market.

Other costs discussed at the meeting include:

1. Approximately $120 for an electrical inspection once the panels are fitted.

2. Most people will require a new electricity meter to be fitted. Most electricity meters are only capable of taking electricity from the grid. The grid-connected solar system requires a meter that is also capable of putting the electricity from your solar panels back into the grid. It is called a bi-directional, or input/output meter. The cost of the new meter depends on your electricity provider but can be anything from $117 to $469.

3. Most homes will have no other costs. However, according to BB’s website, about 20-30% of houses require some extra work which will add to the cost. Some examples may be houses with poor wiring, double-storey houses, houses with a high or unusual pitched roof, and houses that require greater than usual distance between the panels and the inverter. These things will be picked up at pre-inspection stage. If the cost increases too much, you can withdraw and get your money back.

4. There are many ‘extras’ that some people may want to take advantage of. These include an inverter warranty for longer than 3 years and upgrading to bigger systems.

5. Once we are accepted to become a Solar Neighbourhood (mid-March at the earliest) we will advise our Riddells Creek Solar Neighbourhood participants to register with Beyond Building. Preference will be given to assisted or sponsored groups. Some councils and community banks are sponsoring groups, and we will be following this up. Another way to get the finance upfront is if we were to get 50 people who were willing to put up the $8000 up front and then get it back once the system is installed via the rebate. We have no idea how many people could go this far but this is a way to guarantee we go ahead so we will follow this up just to see how many people would consider this.

Our feeling is that it will end up being an $895+ deal. This is still an amazing deal. One way to think of the extra $400 is an extra two years for it to pay for itself (or 1 year if prices double, or 0.5 a year if the refund rate increases as well). It is still a $14,000 system you’d be getting for a great price.

Reasons why you might want to contemplate spending $895+:

• You will feel good that you are doing something positive about climate change.
• In a few years time it will actually make you money.
• It may increase the value of your house by up to $14,000.
• Your taxes are being spent on this rebate.
• 1/4-1/3 of your mains electricity will be gone. With 50 people that’s about 15 households of mains energy usage gone. That’s up to 2% of Riddells Creek’s total mains electricity gone.
• Be a part of a really worthwhile community action – ie. your input is enabling 49 other people to do it too