For being such a sunny continent, Australia is largely underutilised when it comes to solar power. When it comes to manufacturing Australian-made solar panels, well, with Silex Solars announcement in August 2011, the proverbial nail in the coffin was hit in and the coffin buried. Silex Solar was the last remaining manufacturer of solar panels in Australia. They continue to build and sell solar panels, but with imported components, mostly from China.
Former Silex CEO Michael Goldsworthy claims his company had to ‘bite the bullet’ and lose 30 manufacturing jobs after the government rebate programme was scrapped. In a rather obvious case of damage control, Silex replaced Goldsworthy with Craig Menzies who quickly announced that their move was to help secure Silex’s position in the marketplace.
The move to ‘clean energy’ has thus far proved to be a very rocky road with lots of time consuming bends and potholes. Government rebates that help the ‘battlers’ are constantly stopped right when the scheme becomes too popular, with the government never really sure on how much it should give back, let alone contribute to the switch from dirty to clean energy.
The ‘Feed-In’ tariffs (where one can receive money when they feed power back into the electricity grid) that initially made installing solar panels attractive have been cut when the scheme became too successful, while the government rebate (up to $8000), for installing a solar system at your home was done away with entirely. It was replaced by the Solar Credits Programme, where an installed solar system would receive a higher amount of Renewable Energy Credits for the first 1.5 kilowatts they generate. RECs are basically a form of ‘energy currency’ that one can use against energy costs or trade them for money. A great way of us getting used to the cap & trade system that will be rolled along with the Carbon Tax in mid-2012
But just because we aren’t manufacturing solar panels here, doesn’t mean all is lost. The Australian Government is hard at work with its ‘Solar Cities’ program, which aims to showcase the potential of solar power in 5 major areas across the country. However, this programme was announced in 2007 with a woeful $7 million dollar budget.
This of course pales in comparison to the $125 million afforded by the government to Silex Solar to build a .5MW pilot plant, which will then be turned into a 100MW planet, near Bridgewater, Victoria.
Australian manufacturing may seem to be heading to an impasse, but that doesn’t mean we can’t become key players in the renewable energy game or left out of the ever evolving global market place.
World leading solar research continues in Australian universities and with a renewable energy target of 20% by the year 2020, we must stand up to set-backs and pressures and do the best with what we have, when we have it.
By Chard Currie
email: chard.currie@gmail.com

sources:
Skynews
Eco Who
Silex Solar
wikipedia – Solar cities in Australia