Green energy and the installing of solar panels on your house is all the rage at the moment, but what does anyone *really* know about the facts?

Yes you can get a govt rebate, but your COMBINED household income has to be under $100,000  year.

Yes Energy companies will give you further discounts, but only if you transfer to them the Renewable Energy Certificates at no cost.

Lets think about this for a second…..

Origin Energy slipped a brochure into my letter box yesterday extolling the virtues of PV Solar Systems for my home.

Basically for $3,975 inc GST after rebates (if I am financially challenged enough to have a household income under $100,000 pa) they will install a 1kW system and associated inverters and meters required for me to have PV Solar Power.

How awesome is that?

Not very is the answer actually.
Why?

Well it is like this.

I am paying Origin Energy to put their equipment on my roof.
This PV Solar Equipment is, for however long it can depending on where I am, pumping power back into the electricity grid.
When I turn on a light in my house I get electricity from the same coal burning power station as I did before Origin put their stuff on my roof.

So why would I pay them to do this?

1. I get the all good and fuzzy feeling that I am living the ‘green’ lifestyle and I can turn my nose up at my neighbours and friends and their ‘dirty’ electricity.
2. OK so there is an actual benefit, and that is that the power that is put back into the main grid is taken off my electricity bill, so I only pay the net difference between what I used and what I generated, meaning that my power bill will come down to some extent. 

Purchase a fully installed 1kW Origin solar electricity system from only $3,975^ (inc. GST and after rebates). But hurry! This offer is limited to the first 300* customers in your state and will end on 30 November 2008.

*Price subject to customer assigning to Origin the right to create Renewable Energy Certificates for which the system is eligible and meeting $8,000 Australian Government rebate eligibility (see the Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage, and the Arts for information). 

That one is the clincher.

By installing the PV Solar Equipment on the roof of your house and feeding the power back into the grid as the ONLY option, ie you cant have a system with batteries at all, you are granted a Renewable Energy Certificate from the Govt.

This basically means that you a certified ‘Green Energy’ producer.

REC’s are tradable bonds basically, that are able to be bought and sold at market rates.

In the Origin Energy deal, you MUST assign any REC’s to Origin, meaning that THEY are now the certified green electricity producer.

Guess what they do with the REC’s?
They use them to be a qualified green energy producer and sell the electricity that is produced via your roof with your system to other suckers cutomers that want to BUY ‘green’ electricity. 

So lets just look at that math.

I pay $4k Origin Energy and assign ANY govt grants that I may get under solar rebate schemes to them.
The power from my roof goes directly to the main electricity grid and I dont get to use any of those ‘green’ electrons.
Any power that I consume comes from the grid, day or night.
If there is a power outage of the main grid, I have a power outage too, even though I have $4k worth of solar power generator on my roof.
Any REC’s that I get I have to surrender transfer to Origin so that they can then sell MY power to others at a premium.

So, tell me, at what point do I get the benefit out of this, because from where I am sitting Origin get ALL the advantages here.

Why arent they installing PV Systems for free and I sell them the power that the system creates as rental for my roof?