A Picton resident says he’s been left disappointed by the amount of money he gets back from his power company for solar power his house now generates.
Pat Pascoe said the decision to spend $12,000 on the system several years ago was based partly on getting a return on the excess electricity it created.
You get a reasonable return if you get 20 cents a kilowatt hour, but 8c is not very good, he said. Its pretty lopsided, the whole thing.
The Government goes on about it, weve got to be green. They should be telling the power companies.
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He said he was told by the supplier, Harrisons Solar, the system would provide a reasonable return and pay for itself in eight years, but he estimated it would be more like 12 years.
Were nearing retirement age, and dont want to pay too much for power.
From the start of March to the start of April, he was charged between 32c and 33c/kWh by Meridian subsidy Powershop for power from the grid, and he earned 8.5c/kWh in solar rebate.
A Meridian spokeswoman said the buyback rate was set with a view to the long term average price of electricity and the competitive market. The buyback rate for Powershop customers had risen by 13 per cent over the last five years.
We review our prices regularly and believe our buyback pricing is comparable to most other retailers.
Harrisons Solar managing director Phil Harrison said, typically, a payback period for solar was seven to nine years.
When assessing a home for solar, factors taken into account included the current power usage of the household, and the house location. The company then created a system maximising the use of solar power in the home, versus exporting it to the grid.
The company had a partnership with Trustpower paying 16c/kWh, excluding GST, for extra solar generation up to 500 units, and for 24 months.
Power retailers were paying between 7c and 12c, according to My Solar Quotes.
Paul Fuge, manager of Consumer NZs price comparison site Powerswitch, said the solar rebate price had been higher in the past.
When solar first came out there wasnt a lot of it around, so retailers were prepared to offer a bit more, but then as photovoltaics are increasing rapidly in New Zealand … retailers have dropped back quite a bit in terms of what theyll buy it for.
The solar rebate was influenced by the price retailers had to pay for wholesale power, Fuge said.
Spot market prices have been sitting above 30c/kWh recently, resulting in price rises for households and prompting concerns from larger power users.
But it tends to be more like 8c or 9c, so what people are getting from solar reflects the lower value of the wholesale market, said Fuge.
Consumers were sometimes sold solar systems based on a payback period which could be quite optimistic, he said.
It depends on the size of your system, your roof configuration, how much sun you get. And also a big thing is how much electricity you use yourself.
Storage technology such as batteries remained expensive but their price would fall, making it more economical for more people. For some people its not quite there, but it will be soon.
It was difficult to justify installing a solar system if the economics of it depended on selling electricity back into the grid, he said.
If you can be producing electricity out of a solar system and using it yourself, thats producing it for less than youre buying it for, thats where it stacks up.
Where you try and sell it into the system, and youre relying on it to be economic, it probably gets a bit more difficult.
The technology behind smart meters would continue to improve, enabling power retailers to provide more tailored plans for customers, he said.
There will be other plans offered in future which allow you to store electricity in your battery and then sell it at higher priced times, producing electricity during the day when electricitys cheap and selling it at night when its more expensive. Thats what I would expect to see in the future.