PHOTON International The Photovoltaic Magazine

Australia's Solar Cities initiative receives 23 proposals

An expert panel was expected to recommend a shortlist of candidates for the Australian government's Solar Cities initiative by the end of September.

	© Origin Energy Limited
PV cities? The Australian PV industry – pictured a PV system near RE energy utility Origin – is anxiously awaiting the first short listing of the new Solar Cities initiative, which will fund both solar and efficiency projects.

The $75.3 million AUD ($56.8 million USD) program, announced in a 2004 White Paper on energy policy (see PI 7/2004, p. 56), is designed to set up trial programs in up to four cities, combining a mixture of financial incentives for PV systems, smart metering, solar water heaters, and energy efficiency through FY 2012-13.

According to the Department of Environment and Heritage (DEH), consortia from 23 metropolitan areas had submitted expressions of interest by the July 22 deadline, of which 21 were deemed eligible. Seven were submitted by Australia's most populous state, New South Wales (NSW), followed by five projects in South Australia, three each in Victoria and Queensland, two from Western Australia, and one from the Northern Territory. A DEH spokesperson declined to give any details on the submissions. According to several PV experts, about 10 consortia will most likely be asked to submit detailed business cases, from which the five-person panel of experts will select the final winners in the first half of 2006.

But while the Solar Cities initiative is intended to »revolutionize the way industry and households use energy,« according to a DEH press release, its support for Australia's PV industry may be too little. It is still unclear if it will cover three or four metropolitan areas (one of which will be Adelaide). But even if it is destined for the larger number, the initiative is unlikely to get close to meeting the national support of the Photovoltaic Rebate Programme (PVRP), a scheme that got a last-minute two-year reprieve in May when the government agreed to extend funding that had been expected to run out in mid-2005 (see PI 6/2005, p. 67).

Still, Ric Brazzale, executive director of the Business Council for Sustainable Energy, Australia's renewable energy lobby group, says the Solar Cities initiative »has generated a lot of interest from governments, financiers, and electricity suppliers.« He is also hopeful that a planned change to NSW's Building and Sustainability Index (BASIX), increasing a 25-percent target for greenhouse gas emission reductions to 40 percent for new homes built after July 2006, will be a boon for the PV industry. »This means that bigger homes will have no choice but to add PV,« says Brazzale, adding that other states are expected to follow NSW's lead.