Any regrets Dee Sauvarin had about missing out on generous solar panel offers were eclipsed by anxiety over soaring power prices.
“I didn’t want us to get to the point if we run the air-con during a heatwave, are we going to be able to pay the bill?,” Ms Sauvarin said, echoing thoughts many Melburnians would have had during the city’s record March hot spell.
The resident of Melton West in western Melbourne borrowed $6000 for two years for a 3.3 kilowatt solar photovoltaic unit and has “no doubt” it will be money well spent.
Victorian electricity retailers now offer a feed-in tariff of 8 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh) for surplus power households with new PV produce, down from 60 cents two years ago. Even with the cut, though, panels make economic sense for many.
An explosion of PV production in China has slashed wholesale PV prices 80 per cent since 2008 - including about 65 per cent in the past two years alone. At home, grid power prices have risen nationally at 9.6 per cent a year for the past five years, according to IBIS, with more to come.
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