credibility at risk as solar booms, page-6

WA gov likely to INCREASE domestic PV subsidy scheme, not decrease in anticipation of grid overload as previously suggested in Perth Now.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/12/06/3085943.htm

While sloppy reporting by the ABC leaves us a little confused it seems more likely that Barnett meant to indicate that the $25M allocation from WA state funds to compensate for the current 40c/kWhr FIT is likely to be increased (allowing more residential installations to be subsidised rather than increasing the FIT as appears to be the headline). Increasing the FIT rate would not make sense as installations of 40+MWp of capacity in 2010 so far suggests an industry heading for a bubble. Raising the FIT would aggressively inflate the bubble forcing a premature end to the FIT scheme a la NSW. Lots of unhappy punters.

-Why would WA want to keep the residential PV scheme going:
each installation is two happy voters believing in the Libs green credentials at the next election,
-WA is not within a bulls roar of meeting its 20% renewable power by 2020 federal requirement so another couple of hundred MW of PV would help
-the WA grid is overloaded, residential PV reduces peak demand on the higher voltage feeders (5-10 year permitting and construction timeline)and local low voltage distributors (fewer pole fires and blown transformers)
-WA has only one large wind power site left near a power line (south coast at Beenyup) but this is close to lots of rich (Liberal voting) people's holiday homes at Augusta, also windfarm developers won't build in time because of low RECs and long lead times
-WA gas prices are about to soar as the gas liquification plants increase the option to export, forcing intra-state gas prices up to international values.

Good luck to Barnett and Co. if they can run residential PV installations up in WA with blowing a bubble.

Even better news would be that business/commercial scale PV units of MW scale (but not utility scale of 5MW+) on warehouse and shopping centre roofs get a net FIT as that would really move installations up (hasn't Coles or Woolworths already gotten cheesed off with the WA government because they will not get a reasonable FIT for PV power from their distribution centre which they built with a stronger roof expressly to mount PV modules on, only to be told they would only get utility generation feed in rates of 4-6c/kWhr?).