cbd best placed pv / renewables on asx now, page-4

I am but a humble retail investor in renewable energy and related technology stocks. This is a good way to lose money and I am an expert at it.

However, solar power (hot water, space heating/cooling, Conc thermal and PV) has to be the way of the future. Australia is a small backward whisper of a player in this game. The RenewableEnergyNews site has a blog predicting solar will reach 1% of world power supply around 2020. There will be no stopping PV. First your house, then your workplace, then grid utility. Oz is completely missing the workplace bit.

The state gov's that are refusing to extend the FITs at any rate are admitting that the prospective takeup of it by commercial premises (shopping centre and warehouse roofs e.g.) will be a tidal wave. That amount of small-medium (up to say 2MW max) would be so large that the states seem to be admitting it would destablilize the existing electricity market structures, upsetting everything from the regulatory processes for keeping power flowing (greatly increased unused or partly used baseload), through billing (how many domestic users know that half their power bill is the cost of power lines and not the electricity itself?) to the valuations of the power generators & distributors themselves. The state governments are going to water at the thought of Tokyo Energy, TRU, and any number of other major utility generators screaming for support to compensate for their plunging asset values.

This year Australia is heading to install 300MW of PV (see Silex .ppt, Sunwiz http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/blog/post/2010/10/dawn-of-a-new-era-pv-outshines-shw and etc). Oz has about 70GW of installed generator capacity (?) so in 2010 PV installations will be about 0.5% of installed capacity. Now Aust. average capacity utilisation is way less than 100% and most power is used during the day when the PV systems are working. This is likely to mean that PV contribution to Aust. electricity consumption will be significantly greater than the 0.5% fraction of total installed generation capacity indicates.

As PV systems get much cheaper (50% drop in cost in last 12 months, maybe another 30% drop in 2011 as manufacturers scale up and Germany and Spain rein in their FIT schemes to slow uptake) Australian domestic and commercial installations will ramp up even faster.

I have a suggestion on how CBD and other co's can benefit from this, and advance private installations over the glacial pace of our Fed gov solar scheming (4 years to approve 1GW of solar power in 4 plants - that is not a plan, it is a Fed gov. delaying tactic).

I look forward to the major Aust. PV companies (CBD, SOO, maybe AIR, perhaps SolarJuice, Origin) setting up solar co-operative PV farms on the Spanish mode. This way, the cost advantages of scale for installation, operation and maintenance of a (say) 20MW solar farm can be made accessible to Mums and Dads who each own one or two trackers or platforms within a much larger installation.

It was the model for the agricultural tax break schemes so we know that Australians will buy into it.

SF, if a prospectus for participation in such a 'solar farm' scheme came through my letterbox I would look very closely at it.