The Australian Energy Market Operator has announced a proposal for 'emergency backstop' measures to turn down, or switch off, rooftop solar to stabilise the energy grid. This is what it means for households.
If you're one of the 4 million Australian householders or business owners with solar panels on your roof, you may have been greeted with a rude shock at the start of this week.
Even when state governments lavished subsidy schemes on solar and people started to take up the technology with gusto, the amount of power that could be collectively generated was tiny.Across the entire national electricity market, which spans the eastern seaboard and South Australia and services about 10 million customers, excess solar power exported to the grid from household systems can meet more than half of demand at times.
Rooftop solar can't do the same thing, and it's increasingly pushing those plants out of the system in the middle of the day when its output is greatest.Conventional generators can turn down their output to accommodate solar, but only to a point. Eventually, their output becomes so low they have to switch off altogether.
Added to this, AEMO notes that even in South Australia, where the emergency backstop has been in place since 2020, "compliance rates were initially poor". Another option is to increase demand for electricity during the day, when solar energy is so abundant and cheap.Or it could be through electrification — getting our cars and our household appliances to soak up as much of that solar as possible.
In response to the ABC's reporting of the topic this week, AEMO released a statement in which it said it "does not want to directly control people's rooftop solar". Suffice to say, AEMO is ultimately the body responsible for keeping the lights on across the major electricity systems in Australia.None of this is likely to happen without AEMO first setting the parameters by which the backstop would be used.In all likelihood, the backstop power will have a minimal effect on solar households.Although rooftop solar is a growing force in Australia's electricity system, the circumstances in which it pushes the grid to the precipice are still rare.
Chances are, Australia will learn to better capitalise on its solar riches, avoiding the need to take drastic steps like throttling rooftop solar.
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