Add Category
Posted
Low-income households unable to afford solar panels on their homes are bearing the brunt of higher costs of living, the South Australian Council of Social Service (SACOSS) has told a electricity forum organised by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).
SACOSS chief executive Ross Womersley said the problem was caused by tariffs paid to households generating excess electricity from solar panels which was fed back into the power grid.
"Over time some of the generous green schemes that we've introduced — including South Australia's premium feed-in tariff which pays solar consumers many times the cost of energy and is funded disproportionately by non-solar households — is driving prices increases in the South Australian context," Mr Womersley said.
About a quarter of South Australian homes have solar panels.
Those fitted a decade ago could get up to 44 cents per kilowatt hour for excess power, potentially saving thousands of dollars a year on electricity bills.
Mr Womersley accepted there was an environmental benefit as well as a financial motive, but said retailers would inevitably try to recover their costs which put households without solar panels at a disadvantage.
"I think that is part of the conundrum that we have," he said.
"As a community we want to move towards a low carbon future and of course we see that as a desirable outcome, however we also have to recognise where we're providing subsidies in our market and ... people who are experiencing the worst price consequences are those households that don't have solar on their roofs.
"As a result they will not have the benefits that flow with solar and that's likely to be mostly families that are on low incomes or households with low incomes across the state."
The South Australian Greens have a bill before State Parliament to set a minimum feed-in tariff.
Greens' MP Mark Parnell said it was needed so solar panel owners were not "ripped off" by effectively providing free electricity to retailers which could sell it at a profit.
At the moment power retailers paid a feed-in tariff of up to 20 cents, but the market in South Australia provided for a minimum rate of zero.
Mr Parnell said gas prices were the big driver of power prices rises, not solar panel feed-in tariffs.
He said the prices of solar panels had also fallen since feed-in tariffs took effect, but suggested the State Government could step in where they were unaffordable.
"There's no reason why every public housing [property] shouldn't have solar panels on the roof, that's a policy initiative the Government could take," Mr Parnell said.
"That would allow some of our lowest income people to reduce their own bills by having access to solar power."
Meanwhile, South Australian households will be bracing for sharp rises in power bills with retail prices due to rise as much as 20 per cent during the September quarter.
Topics: electricity-energy-and-utilities, community-and-society, welfare, adelaide-5000, sa