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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2018-09-20 Daily Xml
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Parliamentary Committees

Public Works Committee: South Australian Virtual Power Plant Project

Debate resumed.

Mr HUGHES (Giles) (11:36): I was not intending to speak on this issue and the good work the Public Works Committee is doing in terms of assessing the virtual power plant, but I did think it was important to stand up to heavily emphasise that this was a Labor initiative. I congratulate the Liberal government on not turning their back on that initiative. There was a contractual element, but I am sure that there are escape clauses and that the final stage, depending upon the outcome of the earlier stages, is not locked in. It is a great initiative and an exciting initiative.

I am particularly pleased about it because it is targeted at people on low incomes, especially people in Housing SA properties. It has been one of my bugbears over a long period of time when it comes to accessing the cheaper power that rooftop solar can provide that people in Housing SA properties have missed out. The contractual arrangements that someone in a Housing SA property has to enter into in order to have rooftop solar means that if they were to leave the property they would either have to dismantle the PV system and take it with them or leave it in place and get no return on that investment. These are people often on the lowest income having that impost put on them.

The virtual power plant was a way of addressing that and ensuring that people in Housing SA properties got a significant reduction in their electricity costs. I have had a long involvement in this area. Back in the mid-1990s, when I was on the Whyalla city council, I attempted to mandate through our development plan the installation of solar hot-water heaters on properties and new properties that were being built and major extensions. It was a Liberal government at the time. It had to go through the minister, and they did not like the idea of mandating solar hot-water heaters, so we missed out on that.

However, because of our initiatives, ETSA at the time—it had not been privatised yet—and Solahart offered people in Whyalla subsidies to put in solar hot-water heaters in our community. It was a worthwhile program. I was always mindful, though, of the development of PV. For a long time, PV was incredibly expensive; it is not now. It is now the cheapest form of electricity you can get if you have it on your roof. However, as I said, people in Housing SA properties missed out.

Looking at my community of Whyalla, owner-occupied dwellings would probably be at about 50 per cent penetration when it comes to PV systems, yet hardly any of those systems are on Housing SA properties in Whyalla. When you consider that nearly a quarter of the households in Whyalla are Housing SA properties, and that all those were missing out, it is not a good thing. It is fantastic to see the rollout of this program. Hopefully, it will meet all its milestones and demonstrate in the early phases its success, and we will see the battery and the solar panels go up on Housing SA properties in South Australia. It is five kilowatts of solar and a 13.5-kilowatt hour battery, so that will make a big difference.

The aggregation of these systems is incredibly important. I was speaking to one of the senior managers at BHP some time ago about the potential for the virtual power plant. One of the great things about solar is its sheer scalability, from the very small scale to the very large scale. He expressed an interest—this was not the formal position of BHP—in the project because it did lend itself to incremental increases to match the fluctuation in demand over time. He thought it was a very worthwhile initiative. In the meantime, given what is going on with Tesla overseas and its owner, hopefully he can hold things together long enough, but I am sure there would be other battery companies that would be more than eager to jump in to the space.

I have to touch on the constant refrain about our investment in the diesel peaking plant. The simple point about that diesel peaking plant is that it would very rarely be used. The only reason the investment occurred was because of what the private sector did: available capacity not coming online and households and businesses being shed from the system. We have had multiple reports now that indicate that gouging has been going on, the degree of market concentration and how that has been used in a very untoward way when it comes to consumers of electricity. In part, that is a function of privatisation.

Nobody comes to this debate with clean hands. That diesel unit was going to transition over to a gas-fired unit—a highly efficient gas-fired unit—to be used at times of need, but technology gallops on. I was in Port Augusta a few weeks ago at the Upper Spencer Gulf Global Maintenance Conference. In listening to the member for Stuart, it looked like no-one was going to ask any questions initially so I put my hand up, but then some people down the front put their hand up so I thought I would let them ask their questions.

What I was going to say to the member, after listening to his speech, was that one could almost be forgiven for thinking in this state that we now virtually have a bipartisan approach to electricity issues. We are all going to score points at particular times, but when you look at the different elements that those opposite now support, and the elements that we supported in government and when we were putting in resources, it would be very healthy if that sort of approach were happening at a national level. The national level is causing us all sorts of problems because of that really tiny conservative rump in the Liberal Party and the National Party, which are just absolutely fixated on fossil fuels and constantly using climate change as a stalking horse to destabilise leadership in the Liberal and National coalition.

One prays for the day when sanity is going to prevail at a national level, and hopefully that will come with a change of government at a federal level.

Mr Pederick: That won't bring sanity.

Mr HUGHES: You might well find that as a government you might well be in sync with some of the initiatives in the energy field. With those few words, I commend the work that the Public Works Committee is doing. It is important work, to have that oversight, and I look forward to this project being rolled out.

If for some reason, for whatever reason, it does not ultimately stack up, I do have a costed proposal I am more than happy to share with the government. It is cost neutral when it comes to assisting Housing SA properties, and I did put it to the previous government, but this is a more sophisticated approach than the one I was advocating. I still have a cost neutral approach; if this does not work out, come and see me.

Motion carried.

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