The Solar Power Enigma !

It seems that rooftop solar panel installations are creating more power than the system can handle. In April new installations topped 109 megawatts and this was the seventh month that 100 megawatts had been exceeded.  The high price of electricity has opened the flood gates and there is no reason to think that solar will not continue this expansion.

The problem is that the midday sun creates a power peak just when the demand is  low. The electricity industry is thinking it may have to disconnect homes from delivering to the grid to save the system from overload and localised blackouts.  The obvious answer is to convince more householders to install battery options to store the electricity they generate for night and off peak use.

That creates an entirely new problem.  Households with solar and battery supply simply disconnect from the grid and so the huge cost of the poles and wires that deliver to the rest of the community rises for individual households.  Those price increases cause more households to install solar to try and reduce their power bills.   It could destroy the economics of the entire power industry.

What that industry sees as a problem is really a tremendous opportunity to retune the system to take advantage of this power generating peak.  At present, the majority of electric hot water systems are metered to go to work heating water in the middle of the night, when power demand is lowest.  That is when the power used is supplied at the cheapest price.

It makes sense to change that option to the middle of the day when the sun is creating a power excess due to solar and thousands of how water services can soak up that power and further lower the generating cost during the night hours.

Perhaps the prime opportunity to resolve this problem rests with the " pumped power " strategy of Snowy 2, the huge extension of the hydro electric system installed generations earlier in the Snowy mountain.  This plan envisages reusing the same water by pumping it back to higher lakes when demand for electricity is low and then using it to generate new power when demand is high.  That pumping back option is expected to occur at night - when demand is low.

Solar is reversing that situation.  It would make sense to redirect that power excess at the hottest part of the day to running the Snowy 2 pumps so that we have power reserves for when the sun is not shining.

This midday power excess provides an opportunity for industry.  At present, we discount the price of electricity in the middle of the night for hot water generation because we have a power excess at that time.  If we now have a middle of the day excess that should be attractive to industry who would concentrate their power needs to a time frame where cost is cheapest.  Industry is very good at scheduling the heaviest power usage to where economic benefits apply.

Our present electricity pricing is dictated by the production structure of fossil fuel power generation.  Solar has changed that structure and we now need to rethink our whole price strategy to shift the demand pattern accordingly.  It delivers a marvellous opportunity to deliver benefits, if we can get our thinking right !