Sunday, November 8, 2009

Solar incentives drop as cells get raised on roofs

The popularity and demand for solar panels has increased as the price for their installment has dropped substantially. Another aspect of this spike in solar cell sales is the high rebate for the electricity produced by the cells. But because of this high spike in sales the cities and even countries such as Australia have placed cuts in the rebates. These cuts have received some argument because these cuts reduce the rebate by 50%. Cities such as Austin are behind the movement toward reducing the rebate.

The cut I find is logical as proposed. The rebate was used to give incentive to develop solar energies and replace polluting plants and hazardous emissions. As solar sales go up why should the rebate remain the same. The rebate is still in place-though at a lower level, and the people receiving the rebate are still receiving "free" energy. over time they are still benefiting from both. If the rebate were to stay at the current level the city would have to recover this money in some other program-maybe tax increases, which would mean a pretty vicious circle of people paying taxes to the city then the city paying the rebate to those with solar cell. In the end those without solar cells would be paying those with them. This would drive those without cells to install them then the whole system would be useless. The reduction is necessary in my opinion.

1 comment:

Orbi Dayrit said...

I do not think that the slashed rebates will decrease the demand for solar panels as much. I think the incentives will be placed more on the consumer knowing they are “saving the environment”. The point of the incentive is to raise the demand for these panels. Once demand increases, incentives and rebates almost always go down. This way, people are not just buying the panels to jump through the loop holes for money purposes, but for the good sake of energy. If we do keep incentives up, the whole market for solar panels will fail, seeing as the companies that dish out high rebates will basically be slashing their own profits. As for the government incentives, I believe they should also be reduced or become a onetime credit.