Disclaimer: my wife works for Origin Energy. But this material was prepared for my brother-in-law and so I thought it was of sufficient interest to post to my blog. We’re putting this deal in (unless they find that our roof space is insufficient). This is not a special deal for employees at the time of writing.
Essentially we are talking about the 1.5kw solar panels deal from Origin Energy. You need 15 square metres of roof space, a north-ish facing roofing and a 10 to 30 degree angle on the roof. If the angle isn’t there, they’ll need to build a frame to put the solar panel on the proper footing – for which there is a reasonable charge.
http://www.originenergy.com.au/2100/Solar-electricity
Unlike the deal of a year or so ago, this isn’t income or means-tested:
http://www.originenergy.com.au/2833/Solar-Credits-Scheme
With Origin Energy’s current deal (you don’t need to have Origin as your retail provider) you pay $299 up front and then 24 payments of $112.12 a month. Total cost: $2,990 over two years. You have to sign over the Renewable Energy Certificates to Origin (otherwise it’ll cost you $10K).
A 1.5kw panel will save you 18.8c per kilowatt hour if you don’t need to draw that power from the grid:
http://www.originenergy.com.au/2087/Electricity-tariffs-QLD
A 1.5kw panel will earn you 50c per kilowatt hour that you don’t use during the day (feed in tariff):
http://www.originenergy.com.au/2716/Feed-in-tariffs
So your saving per day, if you get the average hours of full sunlight per day for your area (http://www.solarchoice.net.au/blog/how-much-energy-will-my-solar-cells-produce.html):
3.85kw (for a 1kw panel) x 1.5kw x 18.8c = $1.15 per day ($420.05 per annum) – this is your minimum save at average hours per day sunlight.
And could earn you in feed-in tariff:
3.85 (for a 1kw panel) x 1.5kw x 50c = $2.88 per day ($1,053.94) – this is your maximum saving at average hours per day sunlight.
‘Feed-in’ is whatever is fed back into the grid that is not used on your site at that time. You need a special metering device for this to occur – that is an extra ‘reasonable’ charge from Energex.
Savings are in the range of $420 to $1,053 per year – and that’s conservative I think. With sunny days and no cloud you will produce quite a bit more than 3.85kw per 1kw panel per day – but this is the average allowing for cloudy days, sunshine, and dust clouds (speaking of which, I suppose you need to wash them fairly regularly to keep them going).
Incidentally:
- A 25 year warranty
- You can only get the RECs once – you’ll have to pay full price for your second 1.5kw panel.
- Chose 1.5kw panel as it’s the sweet spot for the RECs
Image from Flickr User Powerhouse Museum. Some Rights Reserved.
yer good info to consider -thanks
I live in Melbourne and i have been looking for ways to conserve energy. Your article here helps a lot. Thank you for sharing.
First bill Origin stuffed up – they CHARGED 47 kilowatts at the 19.1 cent rate instead of CREDITING us with 47 kilowatts at 50c. So on the first bill (about six weeks or so, we think, of generation) we earned 47 kilowatts at 50c = $23.50. And it’s hard to say but it looks like we may have saved about 2 kilowatts a day over the whole 3 month period (a further $34.38 saving – this might be $70 saving each quarter I suspect. So real benefit may be $150 a quarter, or $600 a year. Next bill will be more telling.
I’ve compared usage to our previous average daily usage.
There’s no way of knowing what you saved in the house unless you read the total generation figure on the transformer box the same day as Origin, at beginning and end of bill cycle, and then see what you got the green generation amount for (the difference would be what you used onsite.
Hmmmm… I’ve never thought of comparing the usage. Thanks for the info, Micheal!
Glad to be of assistance. Wonder if it’s worth logging that generation information…
I am looking at a package on Solar which costs $2891.00 installed. This includes 8x190w Mono crystalline panels. 1×2.8 inverter. 5 year workman ship and inverter, and 25 year panel warranty. The panels are made in Germany and the inverter is a Mitsubishi unit. Good?
Denis
I thought I’d replied to this some time ago – my apologies!
Price is about right I think; thing to watch is whether it’s going to have support once you’ve implemented it.
I found a good forum to ask these questions at – try http://forums.energymatters.com.au/?
Thanks: Micheal Axelsen