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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2018-09-18 Daily Xml
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Home Battery Scheme

Mr ELLIS (Narungga) (14:40): My question is to the Minister for Energy and Mining. Can the minister update the house on how it's giving South Australians who don't currently have solar panels access to the Home Battery Scheme?

The Hon. D.C. VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN (Stuart—Minister for Energy and Mining) (14:40): Thank you very much to the member for Narungga. There's lots of sunshine on Yorke Peninsula, where he comes from, so it is a very important question from him.

I have already today outlined to the house the subsidy program for household batteries. The member for Narungga asks me about solar panels. As I explained before, under the current pricing regime we don't have differential time-of-day pricing, so to get value out of a household battery you need to have household generation, which is almost always about rooftop solar panels. They are fantastic and have been around for a long time. Some people who got in early have some pretty extraordinary feed-in tariffs. Good luck to them.

What we wanted to do, to get the best value that we possibly could for households and the rest of this state with our battery subsidy program, was to enable households that don't already have panels to be able to access panels as well. This program wouldn't only be available to households that already have panels to retrofit if they were on a lower feed-in tariff and saw it beneficial to do so, and we didn't only also want it to be available to households that could afford the balance of the purchase price and the panels themselves as well. We want as many South Australians as possible to be able to access this program.

We have partnered with Clean Energy Finance Corporation. They have contributed $100 million towards loan funding, which is in addition to our $100 million of subsidy funding, so that households that want to participate can access concessional loans. Of course, they have to be assessed as being creditworthy, and if they are they can access concessional loans so that on the one hand they are going to get a new battery with a subsidy of up to $6,000 from the state government. They can apply to borrow money for the balance of the purchase price of that battery. In addition—coming to the member for Narungga's question—they can also apply to borrow at a concessional interest rate money for the purchase price of the solar panels as well. A South Australian household can get up to a $6,000 subsidy and a cheap loan—no money whatsoever up-front to get new panels and a new battery for their home.

I say again, as I did before, that this is a terrific opportunity for households, but more importantly it's beneficial to the rest of the state. We want to make this program as easy as possible to access and as beneficial for the rest of the state as possible. This is a truly outstanding program, which the then Liberal opposition put together in government. Let me say very clearly that the staff in the newly formed Department for Energy and Mining have done a tremendous job to add the detail to what was already a very good policy position. Clean Energy Finance Corporation has come on board.

Let me also share with the house that the $100 million is there. Clean Energy Finance Corporation have said that they would be very pleased to consider putting more money towards this program. If we are working through the 40,000 households but the loans have all been taken up, they will look to add more money to the loan. This is a truly outstanding program. One last piece of information for the house is that we expect that the subsidies will be adjusted over time, and I say very clearly that they are especially generous at the moment, and I encourage households to get on board quickly.

Ms Cook interjecting:

The SPEAKER: I call to order the member for Hurtle Vale.

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