One of the biggest frustrations in the solar industry from a selling point of view is that there’s a country-wide mentality that:
‘the government isn’t offering the big rebate anymore, so solar isn’t worth it’.
This is absolutely not the case. The government rebate is well and truly still here and it’s extremely generous. This belief has come from immoral pop-up solar companies incorrectly advertising:
‘the rebate is ending soon, get in now and buy our cheap garbage before you miss out’.
This is very frustrating for genuine solar businesses such as ours who have been in the industry long term and plan to stick around for many years to come.
The Rebate in a Nutshell
The government rebate is a contribution to the cost of your solar system, which the government pay up front. Generally, this is about $600 per kW on your solar power purchase (as at January 2020). So, if you’re purchasing a 6kW Solar Power unit, the government will contribute around $3600 towards the cost of your system. Pretty generous, right?
The rebate is called the STC Scheme (Small-scale Technology Certificates). To summarise briefly, the program gives a certain amount of these STCs for every kW of solar power you install on your home. These credits are then sold back to big polluters who need to offset their carbon footprint by buying up these credits. But as a home owner, you won’t really see or deal with any of that. As the retailer, Taylor Energy simply claim the rebate on your behalf and provide it as a point-of-sale discount on the cost of your system.
Rebate and Feed-In Tariffs (they aren’t the same)
Another point of confusion with the public is that the STC rebate and your feed-in tariff are the same thing.
Your feed-in tariff is what your electricity retailer pays you for excess solar power you feed back to the grid. In Queensland back in 2009-2011, there was a very generous and somewhat poorly planned 44 cent feed-in tariff. This was abolished some time ago, so you have missed that one. However, the reason these high tariffs were introduced was that solar power was much more expensive back then. The upfront installation costs of solar power has reduced by nearly 80% since 2008. This means a much bigger solar array is more affordable, and you don’t need such a large feed-in tariff to see quick returns and savings. Feed-in tariffs now vary from 8 to 18 cents depending on the deal you can get from your retailer. And we very strongly suggest shopping around!
At the time of sale, we are always very clear about how much rebate you will receive and what your savings are likely to be. We explain all of the feed-in tariffs very clearly and tailor it correctly to each customer’s unique situation. Unfortunately, other solar retailers haven’t done so over the years, which has led to the mass confusion.
Hopefully this clears up some questions on the rebates!