Featured in The burning question – 10-2021

More sun for everyone

It turns out that you can have too much of a good thing, says Mark Byrne of Australia’s Total Environment Centre. Or rather, it’s possible that there is too much rooftop PV at some times in some places. As a result, a range of critical reforms – including the introduction of export tariffs to pay for upgrades of the electricity distribution network – are necessary to allow for the uninhibited growth of solar in the future, he argues.
10014_Brisbane River H_opt
Image: Springers Solar

  More than a quarter of Australian homes already have rooftop solar, and there are projections that rooftops and other distributed energy resources (DER) could contribute to half of all grid capacity by around 2040. This level of PV penetration is causing technical issues, exacerbating existing local overvoltage issues, and raising broader system security concerns, …

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