What would nuclear policy mean for your solar panels?
What would nuclear policy mean for your solar panels?
Have you considered what the introduction of nuclear energy would mean for your solar panels? You have, no doubt, installed solar or are considering doing so, to lower your energy costs, to reduce cost-of-living pressure on your family and possibly to charge an EV. You may be surprised to learn that these benefits will be lost if Australia adopts a nuclear energy policy.
Graeme Martin, President of Village Power, said the following on the Letters page of The Age, on 16 December 2024:
‘Let’s be clear, … nuclear policy will require limiting people’s access to energy from their own domestic panels and constrain further installations so power will cost more’.
How is this possible you might ask? The answer is in the detail which few people understand.
Why would solar be curtailed?
Nuclear policy is essentially a replacement policy for renewables. There simply won’t be room in the grid for both and this will mean an almost daily curtailment of rooftop solar to the grid and an overall 67% curtailment, leaving Australians who have invested in renewals heavily out of pocket. It will also be a disincentive for those 4 million people looking to invest in rooftop in the future.
One problem with nuclear is that it is baseload energy and has to run all the time. It cannot be switched off, making it inflexible in modulating supply and demand. Nuclear plants gets first call on exporting power to the grid and as there is limited grid capacity, roof-top solar has to be curtailed so it does not overload it. And that means you will not be able to export your own solar to the grid at times of high solar production, and, depending on the age of your panels, you may not be able to even use power you could be generating for your own use. You would be paying for the power you then have to use from the grid, while the sun shines on your solar panels. This is less of an issue for newer panels where a signal can be sent via wifi to turn off the export component but allow the panels to generate for your use. In times of extreme ‘crisis’ (too much solar coming into the grid) the regulator has the authority to instruct the distributors to switch off our solar inverters resulting in no home production at all, but thankfully that does not happen often.
Emerging energy independence under threat
Under current policy, Australia aims to replace much of its large scale, centralised energy system with small scale, localised generation. Decentralisation leads to energy independence such that individual communities are empowered to take responsibility for their own energy needs whether it is through home batteries or community batteries or other types of renewables. In turn, this means that most fossil fuel plants can be phased out. Economically, this is important because keeping Australia’s old and unreliable fossil fuel plants operational is not only a massive drag on climate change targets but also a huge cost to taxpayers.
Cost to the economy
The cost to the economy of building and maintaining nuclear power plants and their associated infrastructure is staggering. Experts in the field have used evidence-based arguments to demonstrate that proposed nuclear policy is under budgeted by half. As taxpayers and energy consumers, the public will bear this cost. Integrating nuclear into the grid will require stricter grid access regulation and this too will add to the cost we shoulder. On the other hand, renewable energy and storage maintenance costs are significantly lower and substantially reduce the cost of living.
Risks to climate targets
The decarbonisation of the energy grid to meet Australia’s climate change reduction targets must be a priority. The highly respected Climate Council of Australia, said in December 2024, ‘[a nuclear scheme will] … produce 1.6 billion tonnes of climate pollution by 2050, over a billion tonnes more than Australia’s current plan’. This refers only to climate pollution from coal and gas plants. Add in the reduction in EVs and climate pollution from industry of an expected 700 million tonnes, and we can understand why we simply would be unable to meet our targets.
Nuclear plants are large scale, grid-inflexible, centralised systems that effectively take away the power of each community to protect itself through establishing an independent, sustainable, flexible system to meet its own energy needs, lower the cost of living for each person, decarbonise the energy grid and tackle the challenges of the climate crisis.
A risk for millions of solar owners
Nuclear policy is more than a risk – it is a nail in the coffin for the investment 4 million Australians have made in rooftop solar to lower their energy bills and tackle climate change, and for the 4 million who are planning on following suit. It will negate the investment that has been and is being made in localised storage solutions, including home and neighbourhood batteries. Renewable research and development will no longer be funded and rebates and feed-in tariffs will be a thing of the past. The Australian solar industry will be brought to its knees as a consequence with huge job losses. And, the decarbonisation of the Australian energy grid will be so curtailed that Australia will be unable to meet its climate change commitments by 2050.
Reference:
https://smartenergy.org.au/coalitions-nuclear-plan-to-switch-off-solar-for-up-to-3-million-homes/
Climate Council https://www.climatecouncil.org.au/resources/economic-meltdown-counting-the-real-cost-of-peter-duttons-nuclear-fantasy/
Written by Robin Gale-Baker