Topic: Solar Panel Prices in New Zealand

Re: Solar Panel Prices in New Zealand 

I have relatives in Spain and I can tell you it is not as simple as you try to tell.
There is the real estate bubble and the lack of productivity and quality issues with industrial products. Some companies have moved production back to e.g. Germany for this reasons. The power costs are not a major reason for re-location.
And the Euro ( not E$) is too strong for their economy to be competitive just like Greece, Italy or Portugal...
You sound like a coal or nuclear lobbyist by blaming re-newable energy for everything bad because it is against their financial interest. How do you know that the "conventional" jobs or how you call it would have been gone anyway.
Look at Detroit in USA. The city and the jobs have gone down because their thinking was conventional.
Building in New Zealand has fallen so far back because of too much conventional thinking instead of progressive long term thinking and now we need to import some know to fix the problem.
We don't need to subsidise power generation here. Once we have lot's of properly built houses we will consume less power than now.
And last subsidies. You think we don't subsidise here. You are dreaming. E.g I pay rates for cleaning up Lake Taupo. I subsidise dairy farming which is the cause of the pollution of Lake Taupo. We destroy our manufacturing and our jobs with rubbish products from China. all for sake of free trade.

Re: Solar Panel Prices in New Zealand 

And we subsidise insulation.
We subsidise the timber industry cleaning up contaminated sites, the building industry because their product (houses) make people sick.
We subsidise the film industry, developers and so on...

Re: Solar Panel Prices in New Zealand 

I can only agree with "Guess What"...
Yours and mine taxes are paying for leaky homes and similar products of a lazy attitude.

I didn't mean to hijack the topic, just to offer some people who are interested an option to get something other than Chinese product, or at least to motivate them to check what else is there (it's all available via internet). Some people are making awful lot of money on inferior products because they have actually done something (gone to China).... Others are wasting a lot of money because they either don't know or can not be bothered to move and check the options.

And finally, fossil fuels are heading towards its end and are already causing a lots of war and misery. I rather support renewable energy and not just for feel good factor... I want my kids to have some future as well.

Re: Solar Panel Prices in New Zealand 

I don't disagree with you. I just hate feed-in tariffs.

One of the key things about PV is that it may well concentrate the mind on how much power a household does use - with a significant proportion "lost" because of past building design legacies and current energy practices (buying decisions).

I despair at what many households will face, especially as our population bulge comes up to retirement: limited money for capital improvements, relatively fixed pensions, rising operating costs and costs of repairs because we have not chosen permanent materials, and have not incorporated low energy passive designs.

And since we have 1.6 million dwellings or thereabouts in NZ, and we are only adding about 13,000 a year, the past building decisions are going to be with us for a long, long time.

Re: Solar Panel Prices in New Zealand 

Hello ‘Guess What’,

Those with a weak argument attack the messenger rather than face the issue.

It is obvious you did not bother to read the well research report on Spain’s ‘green’ failure and did not answer any of my questions posed because you have no answer. Instead, you went off on different confused tangents highlighting all the failures you can attribute to your adopted country.

Face the facts and show me a single financial, structural or scientific problem solved by a subsidy.

You cannot.

Rex

Re: Solar Panel Prices in New Zealand 

Alone the title ‘green’ failure' says it all. It is at least to some extend biased some interested parties.
Sure they made mistakes by perhaps too much subsidies in the wrong places but it is not a "green failure".
You don't even want to admit that we must stop blowing so much s@@t into the atmosphere.
Nuclear power comes with subsidies, coal is hanging on with subsidies (in Europe) and change to better greener and cleaner energy can't be achived without some subsidies. If they don't the money keeps going to subsidise the nuclear power.
Of course it would be nice if the people in the building industry who designed and build the houses (which make people sick) and the people who wrote the standards would pay the huge health bills. Or the breweries the cost for damage caused by exessive alcohol consumption and so on...but the reality is that the taxpayer pays for it .All SUBSIDIES isn't it ???

Re: Solar Panel Prices in New Zealand 

Hello ‘Guess what’,

I have clealy told you I do not agree with ANY susidies - incidentally, the highest subsidies in the USA are paid to big banking and big oil and not to 'green" initiatives.

Why do you still continue to challenge my philosophy as an ecologist? I have practiced for over 40 years which is very likely longer than you have been alive.
I have also told you on numerous occasions that I deplore pollution in all forms (don’t quote that rubbish that CO2 is a pollutant gas - anyone who understands elementary physics knows otherwise) so your snide comments are an irrelevance.

Stick to the facts – let me repeat them by using NZ figures instead of Spain’s.

It is calculated that our present emissions trading scheme (carbon tax) will cost every NZ family $5000 in ‘subsidies’ within five years if implemented as planned – except the rules keep changing so the date may also. If we follow the EU ‘green’ subsidies concept you promote, (as outlined in my first post) then this will rise in year 2060 by 750% which proportionately is $37,500 per family per annum.

But at the same time, the actual recorded (not theoretical) loss of jobs attributed to astronomical energy costs closing industry as experienced in Spain, would send our unemployment figures to over 20%, from 154,000 currently to 475,000+ costing NZ a minimum additional 13 billion/annum.

However, it is gets worse. If the planned methane ‘fart’ tax is also imposed on our farming sector, then every dairy farmer will have a strong incentive to convert his productive paddocks to a Pinus Radiata plantation tying up this highly productive land for 33 years until harvest.
But worse still, when those trees are harvested, the farmer will then have to pay the carbon tax, currently estimated at $35 / ton but escalating to a guessed $150 / ton in 33 years. This is a double whammy to our economy as we produce less food and less export earnings but pay billions in additional tax.

Ah, the law of ‘unintended consequences’.

All these ‘green’ subsidy taxes and GDP losses give NZ exactly what as a beneficial offset?

A theoretical ‘green’ economy where we see visual polluting windmills on wind swept ridges, roof coverings of expensive solar panels, quiet non polluting electric cars with a maximum range of 30Klm, 10,000 years of coal assets locked up in a NZ wide National Park, 100 years of shale gas waiting to be extracted to feed our heavy industry but no longer needed as industry has all located overseas -
A true ‘green’ utopia.

And theoretical altruistic benefits for a now bankrupt New Zealand.
Show me any data to the contrary that can prove otherwise.

Rex

Re: Solar Panel Prices in New Zealand 

Rex said
"Face the facts and show me a single financial, structural or scientific problem solved by a subsidy."

This is such a dumb argument - most of the country works effectively on a subsidy. The way the tax system works is that the rich pay more tax than the poor. Hence when poor people use a public services there service is subsidized by the rich. Does this work? I would say it works pretty well.

I think the argument is really about how much energy is worth? What is the true cost of energy? Should it be that the cost of energy is 8-10c/kwhr (as it currently is)?

I know Rex will take extreme exception with what I'm about to say but I will say it anyway (Please Rex don't take this as an invitation for a global warming nonsense argument).

For those of us who don't "understand elementary physics" and think CO2 is causing warming of the Earth, subsidies of renewable energy will have a positive impact because they reduce the time for the product (take PV for example) to get to an economically viable price (compared to non-renewable sources) by prematurely pushing up demand.

Some of us - albeit the stupid ones as Rex not so subtlety puts it, think that reducing CO2 emissions sooner rather than later is important.

P.S Rex, your out by an order of magnitude with your 30km range for an electric car. Some fully electric cars are getting 260 miles/420 km out of a single charge. This will only keep improving too.

Re: Solar Panel Prices in New Zealand 

The US dollar is in free fall and the mathmatical equation is inevitable that full collaspe WILL happen, maybe even this year! When it does, this will effect all global currencies massively and all this talk of subsidies will be the last thing on peoples minds. How to find food to feed your family will be number one.
Wake up people and do your research. Don't rely only on mainstream media alone.

Re: Solar Panel Prices in New Zealand 

Hello again Solar Chris,

You know very well, that in this context, I was talking exclusively about ‘green subsidies’ rather than general taxation.

I am not going to regurgitate the “global warming nonsense argument” other than ask you, how can you still hold the view that ‘runaway global warming’ is eminent in light of the overwhelming new scientific papers and current data available discrediting that hypothesis? Have you done no new research in the last two years?

I quote from my post to you, two years ago last week:

“My position is that we have far too little observationally based science to safely make ANY verifiable claim for either warming OR cooling but scientists like ‘A Solar Vision’ (read Solar Chris) - are so certain that they have all the required science, they are entitled to impose the cost of their views of anthropogenic warming on the rest of us”.

So to summarise your position, you claim it is justified to lower the living standards of every New Zealander by imposing crippling ‘green’ subsidies to prop up these far less cost effective non-renewable energy supply systems?
This you claim is to cover the losses in producing these more expensive units until they become economically viable because of the increased scale of production.
Let us ignore the inherent failings in each of these systems: such as how to run heavy industry on PV.

And the only justifiable reason you can offer, is that CO2 will be reduced (the Spanish ‘green failure’ showed that it actually increased) and thereby we might prevent our tiny anthropogenic warming effect from expanding into ‘runaway global warming’.

I may be out of touch on the latest electric car range, but I am in touch with the declining credibility of the global warming scam.
In the last two years my own hypotheses on global cooling has strengthen against the failing of all twenty three IPCC models predicting a continuing warming trend. There has been no global warming since 2002 as measured by five of the six data collection methods but CO2 continues a steady natural rise. Obviously, there is no correlation.

If you have not updated your scientific knowledge in the last two years, you are entitled to hold to your ‘global warming’ belief but you are NOT entitled to ask me and the other 70% of the population who reject this failing hypothesis, to PAY for it.

Rex

Ps 'Just do it' - Have you read 'Paper Money Collapse' by Detlev S. Schlichter? He is in agreement with you.

Re: Solar Panel Prices in New Zealand 

So sceptics thinks it is ok to use tax payers money to clean up the mess some of his favorite "conventional" industries leave behind and all the health care costs caused by profit over people mentality ?
Everthing goes as long it is not a subsidy for green technology with huge long term benefits long time beyond oil and other fossil stuff???
Have you heard about the huge water pollution caused by shale gas extraction? Sure you will come up with some Exxon financed studies to deny it all.
Imagine how much the Japanese wish that they would have never build this nuclear power station in Fukoshima?
Imagine if the money wasted for the clean up of the nuclear mess and it's long term consequences would have been used to subsidise safe green renewable energy ???
Sorry I am extremly sceptic abouts sceptics !!!

Re: Solar Panel Prices in New Zealand 

"Have you done no new research in the last two years?"

Rex
With respect I am a scientist and I never stop researching the topic!

Re: Solar Panel Prices in New Zealand 

Hello ‘Guess What”

You are a great theorist but seem to be lacking in practicality (whoops that’s an ad hominem).

I have been patiently trying to educate you on the failings of ‘green’ subsidies.
The irrefutable evidence is showing up all around the world, from dilapidated wind farms with 25% broken down turbines in the US, to corn subsidies producing ethanol at a conversion rate of 1.16 energy input to 1.0 unit return, to solar manufacturers going out of business at an alarming rate, to the failed ‘green’ conversion of Spain heading toward bankruptcy and yet you still persist in wanting to inflict theses subsidies on NZ.

Are you so blinded by a ‘green’ philosophy that this has become a religion to you? Must we all be converted no matter what the cost?

I have shown you that the true cost to NZ is horrendous and yet you blithely ignore this reality and plough on regardless. Try and learn from the mistakes by others and stop throwing up straw men arguments such as pollution from ‘fracking’.
I can find the fault in every method of mineral and hydrocarbon extraction and I don’t need you to tell me what I believe, as you are wrong every time you indulge in an ad hominem attack.

‘Solar Chris’, I know you are a scientist and that is why I am surprised that you have not accepted the changing evidence that calls into serious question, that which we were unsure off two years ago. I now believe the answer is beyond doubt, that our world climate is a chaotic system, certainly not linear and will never be fully understood and certainly never correctly modelled. I add a link to support that view.

You at least, are clear where you stand: you believe (like I used to six years ago), that we are all going to fry from CO2 induced ‘runaway’ warming, in spite of Hansen trying for 34 years to try and find some hard replicable evidence (other than computer generated model garbage), to back his guesswork. You want us to reduce our CO2 emissions even if it drastically lowers our living standard in NZ.

So I ask you both again – why must NZ go down this ‘green’ subsidy path without a cost / benefit analysis supported by the 70% majority of the population who do not agree with you.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/21/the-ridiculousness-continues-climate-complexity-compiled/

Rex

Re: Solar Panel Prices in New Zealand 

If had read my post you would have noticed that I said that we don't need to subsidise power generation here.
We have already a high level of renewable energy (which could have not been put into place without government funding Or you call it subsidies.
In Europe they have built nuclear power stations with government subsidies. It turned out to be a mistake and now the Governments needs to invest again to kickstart the change over to renewable energy. Europe is big and many projects with renewable energy are going on.
Many are a great success and others are poorly managed and planned just like some businesses succeed and some not. But calling the whole thing a failure is way over the top. I wonder how many people do you know who actually work and live in Europe? Do you understand other languages than English to access french german, dutch or scandinavian media for information ?
Do you know how much valuable know how they gather for the future?
New technology requires LONG TERM THINKING and comes always with big finacial losses before technical issues are solved and it becomes economic.
Boing, Airbus are other examples where new technology is not possible without financial risks.
If everyone would think like you do we would be nowhere further tah the 1930's
Did you know that the Arabs invest huge money into renewable energy projects because they think ahead and they know the time will come when the know how to run wind and solar power generation economically needs to be in place.
We will have to bring the know how in just like we do now with energy efficient building.
Look at Auckland no serious public transport is in place because when the decisions about this had to be made this Country was run by shortsighted people like you and the result is that we waste huge money without having a real compehensive solution.
Sure you will repeat again how right you are and how wrong I am but I don't realy care ;-)

Re: Solar Panel Prices in New Zealand 

Rex - I won't take the bait.
I said - I'm not interested in a nonsense climate change debate. This thread is about the price of solar panels in NZ.

"You want us to reduce our CO2 emissions even if it drastically lowers our living standard in NZ".

No I don't want this! I have installed PV and my standard of living has not changed. What's more my neighbors benefit from reduced CO2 emissions as well because they don't incur the large distribution losses associated with long distance electricity transmission.

It has been a good investment to install PV (now!!) only because other countries subsidized substantial R&D investment in PV. The product has reached economic viability much sooner than it would have.

What this subsidy argument really comes down to is whether there is a real reason to get the product to market faster than would naturally occur.

Germany, Spain, Australia, and the US governments (just to name a few) all think there was a good reason.

Chris

Re: Solar Panel Prices in New Zealand 

Hello Guess what?

I was about to compliment you on attempting an answer, but you blew it. Always the ignorant snide comment on how “I retarded the Auckland public transport system with my short-sightedness”.
Maybe you missed reading my submission to the ARC ‘Alternative Transport Strategy’ supporting Architect Hugh Chapman visionary ‘SkyCabs’ proposal for a comprehensive transport solution. I recommend you update yourself: www.skycab.co.nz

But it is true - I admit to the limitation of speaking only one language, but have never found this to be a disadvantage in reading a German scientific paper because there is always a translation handy and because of the Web, I can also read a scientific paper within one day of issue, the one that ‘Nature’ refuses to publish. No, I don’t think we Nz’s are quite as backward as you suggest.

However, I agree with your comment –
“that we don't need to subsidise power generation here.”
But then you proceed to contradict yourself:
“We have already a high level of renewable energy (which could have not been put into place without government funding - Or you call it subsidies”.

No I don’t.
Hydro development was not created with a subsidy, it used capital. Wind derived energy is more expensive to produce than hydro and the DIFFERENCE in cost is offset by a compulsory ‘subsidy’ taken from the oil / coal fired power generators and provided by the taxpayer through the emission trading scheme.
The excuse for claiming this tax is that oil and coal plants produce CO2 and water vapour which are ‘greenhouse’ gasses.
Meridian would not be building more expensive and less efficient wind farms were they not being subsidized. This is the ‘subsidy’ I object to.

Don’t misquote me. I did not call “the whole thing of Europe’s renewable energy a failure” I clearly stated the subsidies were the failure.

You comment: “New technology requires LONG TERM THINKING and comes always with big financial losses before technical issues are solved and it becomes economic”.

Very true, so let us adopt all the sound proven technology from Europe the States and the Arabs AFTER they make all the expensive mistakes (like Spain) rather than we taxpayers pay subsidies to repeat the same mistakes. My daughter works for Microsoft and it took her only a week to fly to NZ and update our software industry. We don’t need, and never could, develop a parallel Microsoft Industry in little old NZ, but we can be right up with the latest software developments within a week.

You still haven’t made your case - let us be a lot cleverer than Europe by NOT using subsidies.

Rex

Re: Solar Panel Prices in New Zealand 

How about doing a practical thing and Buy an
electrical car run it off Solar Panels and do your bit for the country.
I can help if you want.

Re: Solar Panel Prices in New Zealand 

Rex,
so you think we don't use subsidies? Of course we do?
Are we cleverer than Europe? Definitly not.
You are right that we are too small to have our own technology here but if it wasn't the subsidies the "silly" Europeans put into new technology we wouldn't have it either, nor the Chinese.

Re: Solar Panel Prices in New Zealand 

Hello Solar Chris,

Ah, now we are having a debate on the issue.
I am very supportive of you finding your own capital to install PV and thereby in a small way reduce the load on transmission. If we could all have PV on our roof at say a capital cost of $16,000 each, we might stave off building the next hydro plant but would the capital cost of a million PV installations, equate to the capital cost of a hydro plant?

The answer is no, unless you find a subsidy for PV added to the hydro capital cost. Just because the Governments of other Countries apply subsidies derived from a charge on CO2 emissions to make their PV systems viable does not change the fact that we in NZ with our different generation system do not need to do the same.

Now you and I (yes I have installed three personal solar systems in my life), have been fortunate enough to have access to capital to spend in this way and we have indulged ourselves, but can the average new home buyer do the same and the answer is another definite NO.

So you argue, that the NZ taxpayer should support the PV supplier with a ‘subsidy’ to bring this desirable product to market earlier and therefore maybe reduce the manufacturing costs down to closer to the hydro capital cost.
Chris, this will never happen, because PV will always be a more expensive concept given the life expectance of the two systems.

The real crux of the argument is that how we should best use our limited capital to produce our energy without the distortions that subsidies bring. Diversification into more expensive systems like PV or wind with all their inherent limitations of non continuous supply, are decades away or will never be economical alternatives in NZ. The only reason they are being touted is because they do not produce CO2 and that is a dishonest justification for using them as alternatives to hydro.

Other countries that rely on nuclear because they have no oil such as Japan, or the Arab states conversion to solar for when their cheap oil runs out, have different needs to NZ and we should not use that as a justification to follow them.
I do not buy your subsidy argument.

Rex
PS:I s this Northside post serious or a tout for business?

Re: Solar Panel Prices in New Zealand 

Guess what?,

How many times do I have to tell you – I do not approve of subsidies.
If Spain wants to use subsidies to bankrupt itself and you don’t think that is silly, then I give up.

You obviously cannot tell the difference between capital expenditure on development and subsidy expenditure – the Chinese are the least likely of all governments to use subsidies derived from a CO2 tax. Wake me up in a few years when you find it.

Rex

Re: Solar Panel Prices in New Zealand 

Rex

Quote
"but would the capital cost of a million PV installations, equate to the capital cost of a hydro plant?"

Agreed (PV capital cost per kw is about x20 higher), but that doesn't mean PV is not economically viable.

Quote
"we in NZ with our different generation system do not need to do the same"

again - I don't want us to. The cost of PV is low enough now without subsidies.

Quote
"Diversification into more expensive systems like PV or wind with all their inherent limitations of non continuous supply, are decades away or will never be economical alternatives in NZ"

But how is the return on my investment for PV (using real data) at at least 7% (net present value) if PV is not an economic alternative??? - 7% is better than the bank can give me - is it not.

Don't try to claim Meridian 1 to 1 buy-back rate is effectively a subsidy because that's untrue.
My local wellington lines charges are paid in by
fixed daily charge and my exported electricity should therefore only be subject to local lines charges which I pay about $10 per month. The net long distance transmission is zero.

Another way to look at it is I could throw an extension cord over the fence (hypothetical of course) to by neighbors and on-sell the excess electricity to them at the retail rate. Provided my net usage is zero, electricity I import is completely offset by what I selling to my neighbors. The only difference is that the extension cord is actually the 240V lines in my local neighborhood - meridian does not pay for these they are own by Wellington electricity.

Quote
"I do not buy your subsidy argument"

I'm not even sure you know what my subsidy argument is???

PV will reach (reached) viability sooner because early production was largely subsidized. Albeit - not by NZ. This is clearly true.

Re: Solar Panel Prices in New Zealand 

Rex

I do know the difference between capital expenditure on development and subsidy expenditure however you are trying to be smart here.
Fact is that it is money spent with the hope to steer things in the desired direction or to achive a technical goal. The source is not relevant really whether it is called pollution tax, income tax, or carbon tax. It goes into one pot and comes out of one pot. Tobaco tax goes to the Goverment and not directly to the health system.
In your case it seems that everthing that doesn't fit into your pattern is a subsidy and everything else is capital expenditure or whatever...
It is a bit like your endless global warming discussions but in global warming matters (whether it is happening or not) you are not more credible than your opponents.

Re: Solar Panel Prices in New Zealand 

Hello again Solar Chris,

The basic characteristic of all subsidies is to reduce the market price of an item to BELOW its true cost of production by applying Government derived taxation or borrowings.
I reluctantly support my general taxation, being used as a part subsidy to insulate our old badly constructed housing stock, by justifying the outcome of reducing respiratory disease and lessening the strain on our hospitals.

I do not support the application of a subsidy to pay a PV manufacturer the difference between the true cost of this system and what I need to pay for my grid electricity.
I do not treat the Meridian 1 to 1 buy back as a subsidy – only their difference in expenditure on more costly wind generation vs. their expenditure on hydro. They only go down this path because they CAN get a subsidy and that is completely nonsense.

Now you are arguing the cost benefit to you from a privileged position.
I have no doubt that your return on 7% is an excellent investment for you (if only I hadn’t wasted my money on poor quality solar panels that crapped out in five years, I might have been economically ahead using PV – but they had not been invented then).
However, you cannot extrapolate your savings to apply to the rest of us.

First you supplied your own capital whereas the Government has to either borrow this or apply a surcharge tax derived from the CO2 based emission trading scheme. This particular subsidy is the one I have been constantly arguing against.

We cannot supplant the grid with PV, as this can never run our industry, so we must pay for a grid as the base supply. What you are doing is piggybacking; using the grid to supply our industry and then operating a residential PV system to your financial advantage.
I readily acknowledge some minor return to the grid.

If we all followed this path using a subsidy paid from our own taxes, it simply will cost we taxpayers more than we need to pay for our electricity. So your justification for applying a subsidy can never be financially based, it has to be ‘green’ philosophically based and that in my opinion is not a good enough reason to apply it.

Rex

Re: Solar Panel Prices in New Zealand 

Quote

"I do not treat the Meridian 1 to 1 buy back as a subsidy – only their difference in expenditure on more costly wind generation vs. their expenditure on hydro."

Agreed, I don't really want wind generation to go ahead instead of hydro either if the actual cost of wind is more (without government subsidy), but it's not really as simple as that. We can't build enough hydro because suitable sites without opposition are few and far between. Yes, we could build non renewable power stations but as you might have guessed I'm not going to put my vote in for that (I know you probably would).

Quote
"Now you are arguing the cost benefit to you from a privileged position"

What are you talking about??. It doesn't matter who I am, 7% return on investment is 7% return on investment.

Quote
"However, you cannot extrapolate your savings to apply to the rest of us"

Why not?

Re: Solar Panel Prices in New Zealand 

Makes me wonder why we do not get ahead.
a lot of arguments and no solutions.
sounds like politicians,
this subject is way off where it started from.

Subscribing to this subject was good at one stage, but now its become a bore, it was interesting to see what costs were around and why costs were so high in NZ

I see there are a few solar panel manufactures going under now, this is due to prices and how much they have gone down, and also how many Chinese manufactures have pulled there prices down to pay for there loans that were due at the end of last year.
the glut on market is huge and Ebayers sell them for next to nothing,
but there I would not recommend Ebay as I doubt a warranty is in order.

it would be nice to get back on track
Solar Panels Prices In New Zealand