Powering Up: Rooftop Solar Installations Jump By Half To Hit Record 1GW In 2017

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

Australians exceeded 1 gigawatts of rooftop solar panels for the first time last year, with the market set to expand further in 2018 amid ongoing worries about electricity prices, according to Green Energy Markets.
The country added about 1.078 gigawatts of new rooftop solar capacity last year, beating the previous record set in 2012 by 14 per cent, the consultancy said.


Chief Scientist calls for greater battery storage
Chief Scientist Alan Finkel says power bills will go up and energy supply will be less reliable unless Australia develops better storage systems.

The increase over 2016 was about 50 per cent.
"The surge is happening across every state ... and across all segments of the market," said Tristan Edis, director of analysis for Green Energy Markets.
"It's heavily driven by the electricity price hikes and the media attention around them, because it's become a political issue."
The tally is based on the number of renewable energy certificates (known as STCs) created by small-scale panel installations, and excludes the rapidly increasing utility-scale solar farms.
Rooftop installations last year grew a third last year to 172,152 units, snapping a four-year drop. Consumers are shifting to larger units, with 5-kilowatt systems increasingly typical of the market.

A shortage of installers means 2018 should also be off to a solid start for new solar PV as companies try to meet pent-up demand. Photo: Joe Armao JAA

The spurt of solar orders is likely to continue well into 2018 in part because installers have struggled to find staff to meet demand in recent months.
"The market was definitely constrained at the end of 2017," said Warwick Johnston, managing director of SunWiz, another consultancy.

Sun Metals Corporation's Solar Project Manager Lance Moody inspects progress of the solar panels at Sun Metals. 

Even though electricity price rises are expected to taper this year and next, solar demand is unlikely to flag soon.
"Module prices are low, awareness of electricity prices is huge, and momentum in commercial sales keeps on growing," Mr Johnston said.



Commercial break
The revival of the small-scale end of the solar industry began around mid-2016 after wholesale prices spiked in South Australia, Mr Edis said.
Debate over electricity intensified after a powerful storm knocked out power in the state in September of that year.
The events helped to reverse a trend of falling residential demand following the removal of state support schemes and slashed feed-in tariffs paid for exports to the grid.
Business demand had picked up some of the slack – and it has continued to grow.
Mr Edis estimates commercial demand for sub-100 kilowatt systems already made up almost 30 per cent of the market last year.
He expects about a third of firms will see their power contracts expire this year and will face very large hikes in energy charges that will make solar panels appealing.
Natalie Collard, an executive for industry development with the Clean Energy Council, said rooftop solar installations had risen 50-fold in the past decade.
"Today we are seeing farmers, airports, shopping centres, apartment buildings, homes and small businesses installing solar power and storage to take the heat out of their power bills," Ms Collard said.

'Huge year' ahead
The rooftop solar industry itself could be eclipsed within a year or two by the rapid expansion of large-scale solar farms.
According to the Clean Energy Council, there are 33 solar farms under way – including two with wind turbines – totalling 2.291 gigawatts of capacity.
"More large-scale solar farms managed to secure project finance than ever before in 2017, setting up the industry for a huge year [in 2018] in terms of investment and jobs," Ms Collard said.
"With states such as Queensland providing incentives to build solar farms in locations with some of the best sunshine in the world, solar is leading the new resources boom right now."
The increasing scale of the industry globally will also likely keep the pressure on prices.
Solar energy costs will fall about 35 per cent for every doubling of installed capacity between 2010 and 2020, according to a report released over the weekend by the International Renewable Energy Agency.
That pace is faster than the 21 per cent rate forecast for onshore wind and 14 per cent for offshore wind over the period, the report said.
The report found the global levelised cost of electricity for onshore wind now sits at US 6 cents (AUD 7.6 cents) a kilowatt hour, with solar energy at US 10 cents per kilowatt hour.
Fossil fuel energy costs for new plant typically range between US 5 and 17 cents per kilowatt hour.

Links

• Battery charge sends a jolt through energy markets
• Near-record hot 2017, heat burst point to warming world
• Green Energy Markets
• Surging Power Bills Spark Rush for Household Solar in Australia
• Why Energy-Rich Australia Suffers the World’s Priciest Power
• Why Resource-Rich Australia Can't Keep Lights On: QuickTake Q&A
• Lights Out? Now Australia's Got a Coal Shortage
• Happiness is a post-solar electricity bill (Farewell to 2017)
• Private schools go big on solar – a lesson in ethics and good business
• Queensland opens rooftop solar market to low-income and rental households

1.5 C Climate Goal 'Very Unlikely' But Doable: Draft UN Report

Agence France Presse

With only a single degree Celsius of warming so far, our planet is already coping with a crescendo of climate impacts including deadly droughts, erratic rainfall, and storm surges engorged by rising seas

dpa/AFP/File / Oliver Berg

The Paris Agreement goal of capping global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius will slip beyond reach unless nations act now to slash carbon pollution, curb energy demand, and suck CO2 from the air, according to a draft UN report.
Without such efforts, "holding warming to 1.5 C (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the 21st century [is] extremely unlikely," said the 1,000-page report, prepared by hundreds of scientists.
"There is a very high risk that under current emissions trajectories, and current national pledges, global warming will exceed 1.5 C above preindustrial levels."
On current trends, Earth's thermometer will cross that threshold in the 2040s, said the report.
The greenhouse gas emissions guaranteeing that outcome will have been released within 10 to 15 years.
Under any scenario, there is no model that projects a 66-percent-or-better chance of holding global warming below 1.5 C, the synthesis of recent scientific studies concluded.
With only a single degree Celsius of warming so far, our planet is already coping with a crescendo of climate impacts including deadly droughts, erratic rainfall, and storm surges engorged by rising seas.
The landmark, 197-nation climate treaty, inked in 2015, calls for limiting global warming to "well under" 2 C, and "pursuing efforts" for the 1.5 C cap.
All countries made voluntary carbon-cutting pledges, running out to 2030.
At the same time, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) was mandated to prepare a special 1.5 C report covering impacts and feasibility.
The final version, vetted by governments, will be unveiled in October.

Moral hazard
Pressure for the lower temperature target and the report came from nations whose fate could turn on the half-degree difference between a 1.5 C and 2 C world.
Rising seas, for example, threaten the existence of small island states and could displace tens of millions in Bangladesh, Vietnam and other counties with densely populated river deltas.
"There is a tipping point on sea level rise" -- driven mainly by melting icesheets on Greenland and Antarctica -- "somewhere between 1.5 C and 2 C," said Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
"With 2C, according to our models, sea level will just keep on rising," he told AFP.

A pregnant Somali woman sits by a tree trunk outside Dadaab. Photo: AP

The pathways that do exist for stabilising at 1.5 C would require breaching that threshold and then dialling down Earth's surface temperature by drawing CO2 out of the atmosphere and then using if for fuel or storing it underground.
None of technologies that do this exist today on an industrial scale, and some experts fear the long-shot 1.5 C target could pose problems of its own.
"Any scenario for 1.5 C stabilisation likely requires a dubious dependence on 'negative emissions' technologies, whereas 2 C stabilisation is still possible without that," said Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University.
The lure of silver-bullet fixes, he and others point out, could weaken resolve to reduce greenhouse emissions at their source -- an unintended side-effect known as "moral hazard".
Ensuring even a 50/50 chance of a 1.5 C world would require the equivalent of a climate change Marshall Plan, the study concluded.

Lifestyle changes
By 2050, carbon dioxide emissions would need to fall to "net" zero, meaning that any CO2 released into the air would have to be offset. Renewable energy sources -- mainly solar and wind -- would by then be the dominant energy source, and burning coal a distant memory.
Other planet-warming gases such as methane and HFCs would also have to be drastically reduced.
"Rapid and large-scale behaviour and lifestyle changes," such as a shift away from eating meat, will also be essential, the report said.
"We don’t have any margin for less than total commitment," said Chris Field, Director of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment in California and a former co-chair of the IPCC's Working Group II.
"Tackling climate is making serious investments more than making exactly the right mix of investments."
IPCC officials and scientists cautioned that the report -- which has already gone through three rounds of editing by scientists -- is bound to change before it is approved by governments at a meeting in October.
"Drafts are collective works-in-progress that do not necessarily represent the IPCC's final assessment," said IPCC spokesman Jonathan Lynn.
The current review cycle is the first in which government officials will submit comments.
"The final approval process is a dialogue between governments -- which have requested and will use the report -- and the scientists who have written it," he told AFP.

Links

• ‘There is a tipping point’: UN warns climate change goals laid out in Paris accord are almost out of reach
• Leaked Draft Of Landmark Climate Change Report Pours Cold Water On 1.5°C Goal
• Warming set to breach Paris accord's toughest limit by mid century: draft
• Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
• Global Warming of 1.5 °C
• For Coastal Communities, the 1.5C Climate Goal Is a Matter of Life or Death
• Study Shows Earth is Already in a Dire Warming Crisis
• By 2040, Hundreds of Millions May Be Affected By River Floods Across the World
• Marine Food Webs Are on the Brink of Collapse Because of Climate Change