<
https://reneweconomy.com.au/australia-wrote-the-worlds-best-rooftop-pv-rules-we-must-do-the-same-for-plug-in-solar-and-fast/>
"Last Thursday, plug-in solar became legal in Great Britain. The week before
that, New Zealand announced it would do the same within 12 months. Germany
passed a million installed units years ago and is now well past three million.
In Australia you can buy a plug-in kit today, but you cannot legally plug it
in.
I sit on the two Standards Australia committees this technology runs into.
EL-005 writes the battery rules. EL-042 writes the inverter and solar
installation standards. I have been in those rooms for fifteen years, so I want
to be precise about what the obstacle actually is, because it is not what most
people assume.
The obstacle is not that plug-in solar is unsafe. The obstacle is that nobody
in this country has the authority to say yes.
Here is the tangle.
Standard AS/NZS 4777.1 says a grid-connected inverter is part of the fixed
wiring of the installation, on its own circuit, connected by a licensed
electrician.
Standard AS/NZS 5033 says the same about the panels.
Standard AS/NZS 3000 treats a socket outlet as a place where you take power
out, not a place where you put power in.
The Clean Energy Council approved product list, which is what networks and
rebates actually rely on, has no category for a plug-connected inverter, so a
compliant product cannot even be listed. Above all that sit eight state and
territory electrical safety regulators, each with its own Act, and every
distribution network with its own connection rules.
None of those bodies can move first. Standards Australia writes standards, it
does not legalise anything. The CEC cannot list a product that no standard
describes. A state regulator will not approve something the standards do not
permit.
The networks say, reasonably enough, that they will connect anything that
complies with AS/NZS 4777 and is CEC listed, which is a door that cannot
currently be opened. Everybody is waiting for somebody else.
The solution to this red tape quagmire – our energy ministers need to hand the
job to the regulators with a deadline, which is exactly what the UK did."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
