[First Filed: February 10, 2009 @ 12:45]
Simon Corbell has announced the details of “Stage 1 of the ACT’s Electricity Feed-in Tariff Scheme for households and commercial buildings”.
The start date is going to be 1 March and households that produce more electricity than they consume will be paid 50.05 cents per kilowatt.
- This is 3.88 times the calculated normal cost of electricity.”
The amendments will be introduced into the Legislative Assembly this Thursday, and the Government is confident they will passed to allow the scheme to commence on March 1.
The ACT Labor Government has decided to introduce the Feed-in Tariff scheme in 2 stages. Stage 1 will allow householders and commercial building owners with renewable energy generation of up to 30kw capacity to be eligible for the tariff. The average size installation for a household is around 1.5kw. At 30kw large commercial buildings such as shopping centres, office complexes and warehouses will also be eligible.
Windmills, solar panels, impellers in guttering, exercise bikes, the possibilities are endless once people are given a real financial incentive to produce and conserve.
Let’s just hope it doesn’t become economical to run a diesel generator in the shed feeding in. Or even worse to tap the neighbour’s power.
Update [Che] – Just found out that while the legislation is effective from 1 March 2009, the process then becomes that the electricity retailers (ACTEW, Energy Australia etc) will wait for the govt to develop a Code of Best Practice before they are then willing to offer customers a 20 year contract. This could take some months. So while its all supposed to happen on Sunday 1 March 2009, the reality is that it will be some months before Actew start paying out the 50.05c per kilowatt hour. I’m hoping the ACT govt doesn’t go the way of NSW and is so broke they can’t afford to pay their bills by then.