A new Grattan Institute report on rooftop solar says its economic costs exceed its benefits by $9bn. That’s true only if you don’t include all the benefits
Oh dear. Here we go again. The solar industry is clearly winning the battle to turn the global electricity industry upside down and inside out. The plunging cost of battery storage will accelerate that process. It’s just that some people have a hard time accepting it.
The latest big headlines are from the Grattan Institute, which wrote in a report that the economic costs of rooftop solar outweighed the benefits by $9bn. When you actually look at the numbers, they’re a witch’s brew of mistaken assumptions and omissions.
All the supposed negative impacts on the network, if they exist, are likely to be reversed when batteries come in, and PV households will be the first to install them, potentially making the grid much stronger, if the utilities provide the right incentives.
Why not have headlines which say the investment people have made in PV is soon to provide billions in benefits to all consumers, because adding storage provides a much more resilient power system?