![\"Australia](\"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/2019-in-review.jpg\")
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If you’re willing to overlook a couple of major climate disasters, Australia has been doing great this year.\u00a0 We’re on fire!<\/p>\n
You may be wondering how you could overlook the fact fires have incinerated an area of land larger than Switzerland. By the time things are under control we’re likely to have burned bush the size of Tasmania.\u00a0 But I say relax and take your cues from our Prime Minister — the world expert at taking it easy in a crisis.\u00a0 He doesn’t let himself get bothered by little things like two Hawaiis’ worth of Australia going up in smoke.\u00a0 If he did, he wouldn’t have been able to enjoy his overseas vacation at all.<\/p>\n
![\"Scott](\"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/c6de42f99ccd88797c9ec781131d3e46.jpeg\")
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Some people were upset he was enjoying a torchlit Luau<\/a> while homes were going up like torches back in Oz, but he wasn’t doing anything useful here so I don’t blame him for going.\u00a0 The only thing I blame him for is coming back.<\/p>\n You can’t deny it would have been nice to nip off to Honolulu where it was only 29 degrees during our pre-Christmas heatwave.\u00a0 A heatwave that contained Australia’s two hottest days in recorded history.\u00a0 In Adelaide it reached 43 degrees, in Sydney it was 42 degrees, and parts of Balmoral<\/a> hit 1,200 degrees.<\/p>\n On the bright side, the air has cleared up significantly since Malcolm Turnbull took this picture while flying into Sydney:<\/p>\n Image by Malcolm Turnbull<\/p><\/div>\n He wrote:<\/p>\n “We have to accelerate the move to zero emission energy.\u00a0 It will mean a safer planet for our children…”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n What a nice old man.\u00a0 If only he had held some sort of position of power or responsibility at any point in his life. \u00a0Then he might have been able to do something tangible about the inevitable disaster caused by the increasing length and severity of our fire seasons.<\/p>\n There’s no particular mystery around why bushfire risk has increased.\u00a0 Global warming has raised average temperatures in Australia by around 1.5 degrees over the past 100 years.\u00a0 Here’s a graph from the Bureau of Meteorology showing how yearly temperature means have differed from the mean since 1910:<\/p>\n As you can see, the average temperature on this continent has increased by around 1.5 degrees.\u00a0 I’m sure Australians reading this don’t need to be told why a bush fire season where the mean temperature is 24.5 degrees is more dangerous than one where it’s 23 degrees.\u00a0 In other words, I’m assuming the average Australian is smarter than the average Prime Minister.<\/p>\n I’d like to get the elephant in the room out of the way.\u00a0 Firstly, because it’s cruel to confine an elephant, and secondly, because it’s on fire and watching an elephant burn is distressing.\u00a0 Especially since I’ve just eaten a heap of Christmas leftovers, so the smell isn’t even making me hungry.<\/p>\n The reason the Coalition is doing nothing about the bushfire crisis, and may continue to do nothing, is because of the surplus.\u00a0 Or rather, the lack of surplus if they take action that even approaches what’s required.\u00a0 If Australia is to be protected against future bush fires of the magnitude experienced this year it will require tens of billions in additional annual funding for the next couple of election cycles to upgrade our fire fighting capability to the point where it can handle climate disaster level blazes.\u00a0 Then it will take billions per year in additional spending to maintain it.<\/p>\n The Coalition promised a $21 billion surplus<\/a> for this financial year.\u00a0 This figure has since been watered down to $5 billion because of a weakening economy.\u00a0 Dealing with bushfire damage in any meaningful way means there will be no surplus.\u00a0 This is why they have been dithering while Balmoral burns.\u00a0 They’ve centred their political platform around creating a surplus and if that doesn’t materialize they ain’t got much left to give as a reason to vote for them.<\/p>\n After all, they can’t claim they are going to protect us from climate change because, according to them, it either doesn’t exist or they’ll only grudgingly admit it might be a problem.\u00a0 Upon coming back from Hawaii, Scott Morrison struggled to keep only one foot in his mouth at a time as he said:<\/p>\n “There is no argument about the links between broader issues of global climate change and weather events around the world.\u00a0 But I’m sure people equally would acknowledge that the direct connection to any single fire event.\u00a0 It’s not a credible suggestion to make that link.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Pic Credit<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n Look Scotty, we’re not asking you to work out the percentage chance a particular incinerated koala would still be dead without climate change.\u00a0 We just want you to:<\/p>\n If we confine ourselves to considering nations that are larger than Wales then, Australia has the 7th highest per capita GDP in the world<\/a>, so we can afford to take action.\u00a0 Scott Morrison, if you want to keep your surplus, it’s easy.\u00a0 Just put a tax on carbon.\u00a0 That way you can kill two birds with one lump of coal.<\/p>\n You might think the country has enough trouble with idiot politicians who don’t believe in climate change trying to kill us through inaction, but this year Victorians also had to cope with well-meaning idiot politicians messing things up through stupidity.<\/p>\n When Victorian Labor made an election promise to provide a state subsidy for home solar power I didn’t think it was necessary, as rooftop solar<\/a> was doing well.\u00a0 But I did think it would help.\u00a0 I certainly never thought it would be so horribly designed it would:<\/p>\n But they managed to do both.\u00a0 Hopefully things have stabilized now and no more solar installers will be driven out of business, but we can’t be certain at the moment.\u00a0 We’ll have to wait and see.<\/p>\n Normally, I have no trouble in believing in the innate stupidity of human political organizations, but this was so bad it had me wondering if it was actually an intentional attack on the state’s solar industry.\u00a0 I eventually decided they actually were that stupid.<\/p>\n Things haven’t been all bad this year.\u00a0 If you’re willing to overlook climate disasters and the epic stupidity of the Victorian Solar Homes Scheme<\/a>, things are looking up.\u00a0 One piece of good news is solar panels have continued to fall in price.\u00a0 Here’s a chart from PVInsights<\/a> showing this week’s cost per watt in American dollars for solar panels:<\/p>\n They use the word module instead of panel and these are factory gate prices, so don’t expect to find them retailing for this much in Australia.\u00a0 But when we look at solar panels made in China — which is where the majority used in Australia come from — they are damn cheap, even if we only consider the high prices on the chart.\u00a0 The Australian and US dollar have rarely stopped doing 0.69 for the whole financial year, so after converting to Australian dollarydoos<\/a> we get:<\/p>\n If you are wondering what’s the difference between polysilicon and monosilicon<\/a>, the answer is:<\/p>\n “Meh.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Polysilicon is a little cheaper while monosilicon is a little more efficient, but you’re better off focusing on getting a good quality solar panel that suits your needs rather than worrying about what are — in practice — minor technical details.\u00a0 That said, most panels going into Australian roofs these days are monosilicon.<\/p>\n While the cost of solar panels<\/a> can go up the trend is definitely down.\u00a0 While the rate of cost decrease may slow, I don’t have any doubt they’ll be considerably cheaper in the future.<\/p>\n A record amount of solar panel capacity was installed this year.\u00a0 This graph from the Australian PV Institute shows there’s now around 14 gigawatts in the country:1<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n This PV capacity comes to 560 watts per person, which is equal to a pair of 280 watt panels.\u00a0 This is enough to generate an average of over 2 kilowatt-hours per person per day or around 8.4% of our total electricity consumption.2<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0 This means solar PV is now providing more energy to the country than hydroelectricity does in an average year.<\/p>\n You may hear a much lower figure of only around 3% for grid generation, but this figure leaves out rooftop solar, which is the most PV capacity, as this graph shows:<\/p>\n The dark coloured areas at the top of the bars represents large solar farms and comes to around 4.4 gigawatts or only 32% of the total PV in Australia.<\/p>\n Another thing to look out for are graphs like this one from the Australian Energy Regulator which gives large scale solar energy output in the National Electricity Market3<\/a><\/sup> as 2.6% of the total, but which only uses data from the first 3 months of the financial year, which are definitely not the sunniest months of the year:<\/p>\n This year 3.6 gigawatts of solar PV was installed.\u00a0 The amount may be less in 2020 due to a weaker economy and because of the Federal Government allowing support for large scale renewable energy to fade away.\u00a0 But I’m certain any decline will be temporary.\u00a0 With solar continuing to fall in price we’re not going to suddenly decide to toss it in and start building new coal power stations instead.<\/p>\n Major car manufacturers, such as Tesla and Volkswagen<\/a>, are now paying around AU$150 per kilowatt-hour for battery cells.4<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0 This means electric cars are certain to take off.\u00a0 In the short term — which is basically now<\/a> — new car buyers will be able to get better performance by getting an electric car than spending the same amount on a traditional internal combustion engine vehicle.\u00a0 It won’t take long after that for electric cars to be have better performance and be cheaper overall.\u00a0 Clearly, not many people at that point are going to want to buy a fuel burner.<\/p>\n Low cell prices also means there is plenty of potential for home battery systems<\/a> to come down in price.\u00a0 Unfortunately, so far this has manifested itself in much the same way as my potential to lose weight has.\u00a0 Massive decreases are clearly possible, but it just doesn’t seem to have happened yet.<\/p>\n I expect at some point home battery systems will start paying for themselves.\u00a0 Virtual Power Plants<\/a> may go a long way in helping achieve this, but it remains to be seen just how useful they will be to households. We may find many households would be better off without a VPP and all the middle men they come with. \u00a0And that will certainly be true for some of the unsolicited ‘deals’ verging on scams that many solar power system owners are finding in their letter boxes. Expect the 2020s to be the decade of the scammy VPP – which will be a shame as the bad eggs may spoil the party for the honest VPP players.<\/p>\n While the amount of additional battery storage Australia needs to become carbon neutral is none, cheap battery storage — whether in homes, businesses, cars, or large scale battery farms — will still be very helpful.<\/p>\n Over the past year I’ve seen solar panels:<\/p>\n Hopefully the first three are trends that will continue and I really hope the fourth was a once-off and not the first blow struck in a solar revolution.<\/p>\n In 10 years we’ve gone from next to no solar electricity to it supplying around 8.4% of our consumption.\u00a0 If installations continue at the same rate as this year, by 2026 over 20% of our electricity will come directly from the sun.\u00a0 This will lower daytime electricity prices and put downward pressure on solar feed-in tariffs<\/a>, but I am still very optimistic this will occur.<\/p>\n I try to maintain an optimistic outlook because when I look at the behavior of our political leadership it just makes me want to cry.\u00a0 No, wait a minute, I’ve got that the wrong way around…\u00a0 When I look at our political leadership it makes me want to make the Coalition cry.\u00a0 But if all the smoke in Australia can’t manage to bring a tear to their eyes, I don’t know what I can do.<\/p>\n When I started writing this 2019 review I thought I would have something to say about the madness of the Trump Presidency, but Australian politics has taught me you don’t have to sound like a raving looney to be delusional.<\/p>\n I wanted to end the year with a musical number but wasn’t sure what song to use, so I decided to go with the personal theme of our Prime Minister:<\/p>\n![\"Bushfire](\"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/turnbullphoto.jpg\")
In 2019 The Link Between Climate Change & Increases Bushfire Risk Became Obvious To Almost<\/em> Everyone<\/h2>\n
![\"Australia](\"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/bomtempgraph.gif\")
<\/p>\nIn 2019 The Coalition \u00a0Continued Their Fear Of A Burned Surplus<\/h2>\n
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<\/p>\nIn 2019 Vic Labor Screwed Over Their Solar Power Industry<\/h2>\n
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Solar Costs Kept Falling In 2019!<\/h2>\n
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In 2019 Solar Installations Were Up, Up, Up!<\/h2>\n
![\"Australian](\"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/pvinstitute.jpg\")
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<\/p>\nIn 2019 Battery Cells Got Cheaper! But Not Home Batteries…<\/h2>\n
2019\u00a0Gave Birth To A Crap Load Of\u00a0VPPs<\/h2>\n
In 2019 Solar Panels Got Bigger, Better, Reliabler, Less Grammatical<\/h2>\n
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