Startling figures out of NSW last week have confirmed what the public has suspected for months – that there are widespread faults in solar panel installations. And while many of these faults are minor, some are serious.
The issue extends nationwide, with no clear picture of the extent of installation problems across the states, and authorities are afraid that the public could panic and try to interfere with their own systems.
In an audit of 658 household solar systems in western Sydney, just one in five were installed correctly, and some 18.5 per cent had ”major” defects posing safety risks.
Most of the serious problems involve the incorrect wiring of a DC circuit breaker. This does not impact the running of the unit but does pose a ”very low” risk of starting a fire.
There have been immediate claims that the federal government, whose solar panel rebates helped fuel a nationwide rush for the roof-top systems, has kept the problem quiet to avoid the sort of bad publicity sparked by the home insulation and Green Loans schemes.
”They have tried to keep this away from the public as much as possible – that’s clear,” says one solar panel industry operator. ”They didn’t want it to be seen as another home insulation debacle.”
The federal government, through the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, last week denied it has tried to avoid releasing information to the public, saying that solar panel safety is the responsibility of state and territory governments.
But it is true that the Clean Energy Council, the agency contracted by the federal government to accredit solar panel installers, has known about the extent of the problems since October, and was alerted to them by the Department of Climate Change. The director of strategy at the Clean Energy Council, Kane Thornton, told BusinessDay that the figures released in NSW last week were ”probably consistent with what we understood to be the case”.
Mr Thornton says the council made ”no secret of the issue” and was working to fix the problems. Yet he says the council did not seek to widely publicise the extent of the defects because it did not want to cause unnecessary alarm.
Mr Thornton said that because householders cannot fix the faults themselves, the council feared that alerting the public could lead to some people panicking and trying to interfere with, or switch off, their systems.
This would be a problem, because the safety risk with the circuit breaker is only triggered when the solar panel is switched off.
The Clean Energy Council says for a spark to form, it would need to be a sunny day – thus pushing the panels towards full capacity – and the panels would need to be ”shut down in an incorrect manner”.
”Our concern was that there was a greater risk in alerting people to a potential issue that they couldn’t do anything to solve themselves, but could increase the risk … if they become alarmed about it,” Mr Thornton says.
But the federal opposition, as well as some in the industry, suspect there is more to the story. Last week, the opposition’s environment spokesman, Greg Hunt, suggested a national audit had uncovered similar results to the NSW audit, and that the government was ”sitting on” the figures.
The Department of Climate Change did conduct a nationwide ”random and targeted sample of inspections” from last October to June 30. Yet it denies it has sought to keep the information secret, saying it referred any problems to the householder, the state or territory authority and the Clean Energy Council.
However, it did not answer questions about what the results of the inspections were or whether they revealed a similar number of defects to those uncovered in the NSW Fair Trading audit.
Meanwhile, another federal agency, the Office of the Renewable Energy Regulator, began its own round of national inspections in mid-May. It says it is too early for these inspections to generate any data but that it has received ”preliminary information” about certain issues, including incorrectly wired DC circuit breakers.
In Victoria, the state government agency responsible for policing solar panel safety insists that the extent of faults uncovered in NSW has not happened there.
”Victoria has the most rigorous safety regime for home solar systems in Australia and has not experienced the problems reported in other states,” a spokeswoman for Energy Safe Victoria said. ”The inspection of every solar installation by licensed electrical inspectors is mandatory in Victoria.”
An Energy Safe audit of 81 Victorian homes last year found that nine had the serious defect. These were fixed and installers and inspectors statewide were alerted about the need to fix incorrect installations.
Since then, Energy Safe says it has run a series of inspections and found no more of the faults. ”We are very confident this is not an ongoing issue,” a spokeswoman said.
The Clean Energy Council says there are now 300,000 solar panel installations nationwide. More than 130,000 solar panel systems were installed under the Solar Homes and Communities Plan. Originally a Howard government scheme, the plan was beefed up with generous rebates after Labor was elected in 2007, then dramatically axed in 2009 after $850 million in cost overruns.
In a mistake repeated under the Green Loans and home insulation programs, the government had drastically underestimated the demand its rebates would spark.
Demand surged again when state governments brought in feed-in tariff programs for household solar systems. Several have since been scaled back amid burgeoning participation.
The federal Solar Credits scheme, which replaced the Solar Homes rebate, was also scaled back from July 1, and will be stepped down gradually until 2013.
According to the Australian PV Association, federal, state and territory governments spent $641.3 million on the industry in 2010: 78 per cent of it on ”market stimulation”, mostly through the federal Solar Homes and Communities Plan.
Last year, 383 megawatts of photovoltaic power was installed in Australia in 2010, an incredible 480 per cent rise on 2009. Little wonder there have been concerns raised about the quality of installations in such a booming market.
Even within the industry, opinion is divided about just how big a deal the faulty solar panel installations are. The risk of fire from a faulty switch is, by all accounts, very small – the Clean Energy Council says there have been just ”three minor incidents” reported nationwide, and no actual house fires.
But as the National Electrical and Communications Association, the body representing electrical contractors , says, ”there is going to be a significant amount of rectification work required” to check and fix the switches. Unfortunately, no one knows just how many faulty systems there are.
There has been no shortage of audits and inspections of household solar panel installations around Australia. Apart from work by individual states, the federal Department of Climate Change has carried out ”random and targeted” inspections, and national inspections by the federal Office of the Renewable Energy Regulator are under way.
Still, it remains impossible to get a clear picture of the extent of installation problems nationwide.
The Office of the Renewable Energy Regulator says it intends to make ”general information” about its inspections public, but it is not clear whether this will include any information about safety defects.
State regulators will be told about any safety problems found during these inspections. The Office of the Renewable Energy Regulator says it will be up to these state agencies to release this information.
Given the results of the western Sydney audit, the ongoing speculation about the extent of the problems, and the massive investment by taxpayers in the solar panel industry, a bit of openness and transparency – or as some call it, sunlight – does not seem like much to ask for.
Courtesy of domain.com.au