The Northern Territory Federal Government provides residents with various forms of assistance for the installation of a solar PV system. This includes a rebate off the total price when you purchase a system, and credits on your electricity bill from the government purchasing the excess power your system produces which you don’t consume during the day.
Below is a brief overview of each of the rebates available to NT residents.
Credits for excess power: You will receive a credit on your electricity bill for any unused solar power that is generated by your system and sent back to the grid. This is called a Feed-in Tariff (FiT). As the Northern Territory electricity market is not regulated, feed-in tariffs are set by the electricity retailer. You can visit the Power and Water Corporation website to see a list of electricity retailers that operate in your area. The Northern Territory currently has a gross feed-in tariff of 26.095 cents per kilowatt hour.
The greatest benefit that your solar system will give you however is not from your credits for excess power, but rather by offsetting your daytime electricity consumption. For every unit of electricity your solar power system produces and that you consume at the premise saves you from having to purchase that unit from your electricity retailer.
Reduction in purchase price: When you install a solar system in your Northern Territory home, you generate Small-scale Technology Certificates (STCs), which are sometimes referred to as a ‘Government Solar Rebate’. You’ll receive 1 STC for every Megawatt of energy your system is expected to produce until 2031.
For example, a 5kW system (approx 17 panels) will produce around 88MWh worth of electricity over the 11-year period until 2031, meaning you are entitled to 88 STCs.
Once your system has been installed in your home, and the STCs have been registered, they can be sold to recover a portion of the cost of purchasing your solar PV system. Given the complexity surrounding creating and selling STCs, it’s common practice to assign the right to create the STCs to your NT solar provider, in exchange for an upfront discount off the full, or ‘true’, system price.
STCs currently trade for around $37 each, which means you’d receive around $3,250 discount off the full, or ‘true’, cost of a 5kW system.
Infinite Energy will quote a price to you that is inclusive of the STC discount. This is the final price of your system. STC’s reduce every year on the 1st of January (and will do so until they are completely phased out), so it’s best to avoid holding off installing your system to acquire the maximum amount.
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