New South Wales Changing the Solar Bonus Scheme to Gross FIT leads to supernormal Returns

New South Wales,Australia had started a very generous Feed in Tariff Scheme known as the “Solar Bonus Scheme” for solar installations under 10 Kw in size.This program which had been started in January 2009 had initially proven to be a failure because it was based on net feed in tariffs which resulted in insufficient returns for solar households.A Change in the scheme in Nov 2009 to change it to Gross Feed in Tariff from Jan 2010 has resulted in a very fast uptake as returns became quite large at 60c/KwH.The Australian Bureaucrats had expected the 50 MW scheme to last till 2012 but the upper limit got hit in 2010 itself.New South Wales Generous Feed in Tariffs hitting Upper Cap prematurely unsurprisingly surprises the Australian Bureaucrats.A Simple Calculation of the Returns on Solar Installations at 60c/KwH would have made it clear to anyone that the scheme would be wildly popular and the upper cap would be hit much before 2012.However the Bureaucrats were surprised by the rapid speed of solar installations under this scheme.No wonder State Control Communism Ideology lost out to Capitalism.

Governments Regularly Design and Implement Faulty Feed in Tariff Schemes around the World

Countries around the world have always managed to shoot themselves on the foot while designing and implementing Feed in Tariff Schemes.Spain did it in 2008 resulting in a Boom and Bust Cycle,Czech is going through the Boom Phase currently while UK seems to be in the starting stage of the Boom.A Bust inevitably follows the Boom,as Bureaucrats never manage to prepare a good incentive scheme to promote Green Energy.It always surprises me how a developed nation government regularly manages to botch up these schemes.Note France cuts its FIT for Solar Energy the 2nd time in less than a year while Spain is again rethinking Renewable Subsidies.Ontario Canada was also thinking of retroactively changing micro FITs before saner minds prevailed.

Popular solar bonus scheme to be reviewed – ABC

The New South Wales Government will review its Solar Bonus Scheme after a faster than expected take up of the incentives to encourage renewable energy.The scheme was established in January and the Energy Minister Paul Lynch says 30,000 households are now being paid to feed renewable energy into the electricity grid.

He says the first milestone of 50 megawatts has now been reached, triggering the review.The government had anticipated that would not happen until 2012.