Solar feed-in charges can stabilise grid, AER reviews says

Solar panel owners are used to getting paid for sending power back to grid but now energy authorities say they may be made to pay instead.

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Making rooftop solar owners pay to send energy into the grid should be considered as the system grapples with keeping the grid stable, the Australian Energy Regulator says.

Other options include charging solar owners for the necessary upgrades to the grid — or paying them to have their panel output turned off when the system is overloaded with too much power.

The options are canvassed in a special report in the AER’s annual review of the state of the energy market.

Under current rules, rooftop solar owners pay to connect to the grid but SA Power Networks, which runs the distribution network, cannot charge for the use of the grid when a homeowner sells power into the system.

“Forward and reverse power flows through a distribution network fluctuate widely during the day,” the AER said.

“This fluctuation can impact the quality and reliability of power supplies at certain times, especially during periods of very high or low demand, when voltage instability is more likely. “These costs affect all customers but are not charged to (rooftop solar) owners, so are not factored into (householder) investment decisions.”

Upgrading the system to accommodate the extra solar is expensive which has raised concerns about the inequity of the costs being shared by all electricity customers, whether or not they have solar panels.

An SA Power Networks survey of more than 1000 consumers considered three options — a comprehensive upgrade of the network, a “do nothing” approach where new solar owners would be barred from entry in choke point suburbs or a “dynamic” model where solar could be turned off for short periods but also export limits would be increased at other times.

The survey respondents favoured the dynamic model.

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The AER report, published on Wednesday, said reforms should consider whether households opt into such a model with “rewards for their solar panels being constrained from exporting to the grid when the network is under pressure”.

The State Government last month allocated $10 million to underwrite SA Power Networks bringing forward upgrade work to support more solar and to pursue a call by the Australian Energy Market Operator for solar to be switched off remotely at times of overload.

“Solar is now a fundamental part of the system and we are reaching the limits of the hosting capacity of the network,” SA Power Networks spokesman Paul Roberts said.

In just the past year, some 400MW of solar power has been added to the SA network.

The Northern Power station in Port Augusta which closed in 2016 when its owners found it too uneconomic had a 520MW capacity.