{"id":38938,"date":"2020-04-27T14:33:43","date_gmt":"2020-04-27T04:03:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/?p=38938"},"modified":"2020-04-28T13:42:48","modified_gmt":"2020-04-28T03:12:48","slug":"zero-kw-export-solar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/zero-kw-export-solar\/","title":{"rendered":"Help! I’m Export Limited To Zero kW. Does Solar Make Any Sense?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Zero

If you are not allowed to export any of your solar electricity, is it still worth getting panels?<\/p><\/div>\n

Some people in Australia can’t export solar electricity to the grid.\u00a0 This is because their local Distributed Network Service Provider (DNSP) has export limited their home to zero kilowatts.\u00a0 While this isn’t common — yet — it is a tragedy wrapped in personal economic pain. It’s economically painful because households can’t get a feed-in tariff<\/a> for their surplus solar electricity.\u00a0 The tragedy is because — when a large number of homes are considered — it’s going to kill people. \u00a0When clean solar electricity sent into the grid displaces fossil fuel use, it reduces the amount of pollution we breathe.<\/p>\n

There are good reasons not to allow more solar exports onto a local grid that can’t handle it. Still, it’s nuts not to devote adequate resources to fixing the problem and instead simply prevent homes in towns and cities from exporting clean electricity.\u00a0 It’s this kind of penny-pinching stupidity that ends up causing fatalities, and after our disastrous bushfire season, we don’t need any more of that.<\/p>\n

But I won’t go on a loooonnng<\/em> rant about the stupidity of wasting clean electricity to the benefit of lung-damaging coal power — at a time when healthy lungs are at a premium. I won’t harp on about how global warming contributes to bushfires, damages agriculture, and contributes to flooding.<\/p>\n

I’ll instead restrain myself and concentrate on the question of whether or not it makes sense for people to still get solar<\/a> if they can’t export their surplus PV-generated electricity.\u00a0For most households, the answer is — yes.<\/p>\n

The financially optimal size of a zero-export solar power system depends on how much electricity you use during the day.\u00a0 The optimal size will be smaller than for a non-export-limited system.<\/p>\n

Batteries are more likely to pay from themselves if a home is zero export limited. However, outside of South Australia with its high electricity prices and hefty battery subsidy, they are still unlikely to make economic sense for a typical home.\u00a0 A significant reason is that zero export homes can’t join Virtual Power Plants<\/a> (VPPs) and VPPs improve battery economics.\u00a0 But because the cost of battery systems<\/a> will continue to fall, in the future they are likely to be a standard feature of zero export homes.<\/p>\n

Rant [Redacted]<\/h2>\n

This section you are currently reading used to contain a rant about how stupid it was for…<\/p>\n