Worker ruling sends shock through solar industry

Solar farms will be scrambling to find qualified sparkies for a job that doesn’t require electrical work, a peak energy body has claimed, under new regulations that have sent shockwaves through the industry.

SOLAR farms will be scrambling to find qualified sparkies for a job that doesn’t require electrical work, a peak energy body has claimed, under new regulations that have sent shockwaves through the industry.

Only licensed electricians will be able to mount, locate, fix or remove solar panels on Queensland solar farms from May 13.

However Clean Energy Council director of energy generation Anna Freeman slammed the State Government’s ruling this week as entirely unnecessary and had people “extremely worried”.

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“Because if you are planning to start construction very soon or maybe you’re in the middle of construction and no longer are allowed to fix panels unless you have an electrician doing it, you’ve got to do some very fast work to try and find these people,” she said.

“There is no electrical work involved in what the Government is now requiring solar farm proponents to carry out.”

The regulations, which are a major win for the Electrical Trades Union, is also estimated to increase the total cost of projects by up to 1.1 per cent – based on a 100MW solar farm.

However the Government’s amendment states the cost impacts would likely be “somewhat offset” because licensed electricians are less likely to be supervised or have their work reviewed.

This means for proposed projects, like the Rollingstone Solar Farm near Townsville that’s estimated to cost $210 million, proponents could have to fork out an added $2.3 million.

Ms Freeman said the ruling took CEC by surprise.

The Government’s amendment states the cost impacts would likely be “somewhat offset” because licensed electricians are less likely to be supervised or have their work reviewed.

“The thing we’re most concerned about is they (farms) will have labourers on these solar farms at the moment, often hired from the local community, and now they will need to be dismissed effectively,” she said.

“And the proponents will have to scramble to find large numbers of electricians to do very mundane, non-electrical tasks.

“They (State Government) certainly provided … virtually no opportunity for the solar industry to talk through this issue and understand what the actual problem was that they were trying to solve.”

Industrial Relations Minister Grace Grace said the Government’s primary concern was safety.

“Unlicensed workers such as backpackers and labourers should not be mounting and removing live solar panels, this is electrical work and that needs to be done by licensed workers,” she said.

“Over the past eight months the steering group has worked with the Office of Industrial Relations to develop the code of practice and necessary regulation changes.

“Broader industry consultation occurred once the draft code was finalised, with the majority of stakeholders supporting the changes.”

Shadow energy spokesman Michael Hart said while worker safety should never be compromised, Labor needed to ensure increased costs didn’t stop renewable projects from getting off the ground.