More than 60,000 solar customers in South Australia have been the first to experience higher power bills after a lucrative subsidy scheme came to end last week according to ABC News.
By January 1 next year, more than 250 million early users and adopters of solar across South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales will lose the bonus feed-in tariff and be paid less for the energy they feed into the grid.
The Australian Energy Council stated the incentives to kick-start the uptake of rooftop solar had run its course and it was time to return balance to the energy market. Australian Energy Council’s Sarah McNamara said solar customers would now be paid the true value of the energy they produce. She also added that the generous feed-in tariffs have been paid for by all South Australian households who’ve had to subsidise very generous feed-tariffs.
Reese Turner of Solar Citizens has stated that the amount paid for excess solar energy was far too low. He also said that he was worried that like in NSW, the energy regulator in South Australia wanted to get rid of the minimum retailer feed-in tariff.
Ms McNamara also disputed that model had worked well in southeast Queensland. She said that retailers were offering amounts from $0.04/kWh up to $0.11/kWh, thus there’s a diversity in Queensland that shows healthy competition among retailers would occur even without the base rate being set.
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