BY KERRIE O’CONNOR
20 May, 2011
Government promises are safe as houses - unless your house has solar panels on its roof.
That’s the reaction of upset Eurobodalla consumers and installers to the NSW Government’s cuts to the solar bonus scheme.
Premier Barry O’Farrell has defended axing the scheme and slashing the feed-in tariff from a 60 cents per kilowatt-hour rebate to 40 cents. He said the blowout in the ALP scheme from $355 million to $1.9 billion meant all households would cop a $170 rise in their power bill had he not done so.
But Moruya installers Clay and Luke Stafford say it’s a breach of contract and customers, including pensioners, who paid for systems believing they had signed a seven-year contract have been let down.
“(There are) people who borrowed money and there is one who I don’t think is going to be able to repay it in time,” Clay Stafford said.
“They thought it was a government contract so it couldn’t be changed.”
Luke Stafford said he felt “pretty ordinary” that, through no fault of his own, what they had told customers was no longer true.
“It is all pretty unfair,” he said. “Everyone was led to believe they had seven years of this 60 cents tariff and we told them it was legislation. Now, that means nothing.
“They had every right to believe us, we thought we were telling the truth, but now that has all changed.”
Gai Gibson, of Malua Bay, was one of about 30 neighbouring households who combined to purchase systems, earning a free system for a community group in the process. Now she’s “up in arms”.
“This new Liberal Government was meant to come in and do all these good things to help our society and I think this is one of the worst decisions,” she said.
“It was a contract, it was given to us for so many years and now they have gone back on it.”
Moruya natural therapist Alison Walsh is on solar at home and purchased a two-kilowatt system for her practice for “ethical” as well as financial reasons.
“It is disappointing a promise has been taken back,” she said.
She believes she will pay for her system within the warranty life of the panels, but is concerned for others.
“It is still a good ethical decision, and a good financial decision. Even with the cuts, the payback period is well within the warranty period of the panels.
“But it is problematic for people who had used those figures to justify a large investment or (are) paying back a loan.”
Mr O’Farrell yesterday said the cost of the scheme was out of control, an “ALP mess” and had blown out five-fold.
“Families across the State are already struggling to pay their electricity bills. We are not going to lumber them with an additional $170 on their bills,” he said.
Bega MP Andrew Constance this week said pensioners were shivering under blankets unable to pay their heating bills.
That, said Ms Walsh, was “political claptrap”.
“If you look at the cost of the solar rebate scheme, on the actual increasing cost in electricity prices, it is between six and eight per cent when you look at the data,” she said. “The main cost is in increasing infrastructure spending. No one is talking about that.”
However, she agreed the original 60 cents tariff may have been too generous to start with.
“But that mistake should not be carried by people who signed a contract,” she said.
Clay said about 20 per cent of his customers were pensioners.
“Pensioners are doing it to offset their power for the rest of their lives,” he said.
Clay has been installing systems in Moruya for eight years and recently hired Luke.
“We needed to get more employees, so we’ve expanded and now we don’t know what will happen,” he said.
“It is a breach of contract and will make future investment difficult. I would like to see Barry (O’Farrell) do to the coal industry what he does to the solar industry - change their subsidies all over the place, all the time with no notice and see how they like it.”
However he remains optimistic for the industry.
“(Solar) is still a way of offsetting your power and it is still not an enormous payback time.”
No comments:
Post a Comment