Kylea Tink (North Sydney, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Ausgrid and other New South Wales energy service providers will introduce new rooftop solar feed-in tariffs that will charge solar panel owners per kilowatt for exporting power to the grid during peak production time. This announcement sparked controversy this past week, including in my electorate of North Sydney.

I admit this is not a simple issue. It raises complex questions and equity considerations, particularly about who should bear the additional network costs that come with high rooftop solar penetration. Certainly, some shock jocks have latched onto the story, misreporting some of the details and missing some of the facts. To me, what the debate highlights is that households must be at the centre of energy and climate policy and that more support from government should be directed towards helping households electrify and invest in energy storage.

For context: the market rules that paved the way for these tariffs were actually introduced in August 2021 by the Australian Energy Market Commission. This national rule change was a necessary precursor to the changes which will be introduced in the next Australian energy regulator pricing review, in 2025. Ausgrid, Essential Energy and Endeavour Energy, in New South Wales, as well as Evoenergy, in the ACT, have all previously flagged their intentions to introduce solar export tariffs.

Electricity networks are required to offer a choice of tariffs: a free basic service with a lower export threshold or a high-level service with unlimited exports most of the time but a network levy at some times. Owners can opt into an export tariff that suits them. The tariff is designed to move much of the energy use to the middle of the day to coincide with its peak generation, effectively squashing what is commonly referred to as the 'duck curve'; however, there has understandably been upset from solar owners who cannot afford the energy efficiency or storage solutions that would help them benefit from this tariff structure, and therein lies the problem.

Managing solar exports well requires additional spending. You could have smart appliances that can be set to run at times of peak demand, but that costs money. You could have an efficient heat pump, hot water system or reverse-cycle air conditioning system, but that costs money. You could have hardware such as smart meters for consumption monitoring, but, again, that costs money. And there is the ultimate solution for optimising solar self-consumption, which would be a battery or electric vehicle. Both cost money. Certainly this outlay will be more than recouped by the energy cost savings over time, but the upfront spending is not insignificant. Just because a house has solar panels, that does not mean it will be able to afford these additional options. Many solar households have striven to do their part and contribute to the renewable transition, and it is fair to say that they should not be penalised simply because they cannot afford a battery or an electric vehicle. At the same time, the money to upgrade the grid to accommodate increasing amounts of rooftop solar while also keeping the grid running smoothly should not be borne by poorer, non-solar households, particularly when the issue is arguably the result of distributors failing to manage voltage. Clearly, more support is needed to get solar onto low-income households, including rental households, and to support the uptake of home and community batteries and energy-efficient measures so everyone can benefit from the energy transition.

The federal budget was an opportunity to do this, but it fell disappointingly short. While it included welcome commitments to build clean energy manufacturing and improve the nation's electrical skill base, there was little for household electrification or to encourage the take-up of battery storage by households. According to analysis commissioned by Solar Citizens and conducted by the Australian PV Institute at the University of New South Wales, there is a massive $9.3 billion per year in potential cost savings for Australians if people living in apartments or houses with more space for solar panels were supported to install more rooftop solar. Let me repeat that: $9.3 billion worth of savings a year. Yet the budget delivered next to nothing for the millions of Australians who cannot afford the upfront investment to ditch expensive gas and petrol for cheap and healthy solar, EVs and electric appliances, and there was nothing to install a residential battery alongside rooftop solar or to better integrate community energy resources into the grid.

The federal government should do more to help reduce the cost of the transition for households, and should remove barriers preventing households from installing solar panels, batteries and electric appliances, particularly in apartments. This is the cheapest and fastest way to bring down energy bills for everyone and eliminate expensive and polluting fossil fuels. Households must be at the centre of energy and climate policy.