The mad rush is on by householders to beat the government’s latest cutbacks to the mismanaged roof-top solar subsidy scheme, boosting power bills for all other Australians, Senator Ron Boswell said today.

According to government figures more than 100,000 households across Australia have had roof top systems installed so far this year to beat a reduction of about $1000 in the up-front cash they will receive for their systems.

The take-up is running well ahead of last year when there were just over 170,000 installations for the entire year - according to the Department of Climate Change.

The register of Small Scale Technology Certificates shows there have been over 16.4 million created so far this year by roof-top solar power systems.  This means over 100,000 installations at the government’s estimated average of 155 certificates per 1.5MW system. The certificates are worth approximately $660 million.

At a nominal $40 each the approximately 26 million certificates created last year in 170,115 installations created upfront subsidies of over $1 billion.

The gold rush for certificates started in 2010 with the Government’s generous offer of free certificates for all the power a roof-top system would generate – over 15 years – multiplied by five.

In order to stem the tide Climate Change Minister Greg Combet announced in December the government would reduce the multiple from five to four one year ahead of schedule - in July this year - but earlier this month, in the face of skyrocketing demand as people rushed to maximise their return before the boom dropped, he announced the multiple would drop to 3 this July.

“All that he will have achieved is another gold rush as people get ever more nervous about the government’s rapid changes to the scheme, and dash to get the three times multiplier before that, too, is downgraded,” Senator Boswell said.

“All of this largesse will finish up on our power bills, for a tiny reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.”

NSW’s IPART recently attributed the cause of one-third of projected power price increases to federal and state government renewable energy policy follies. In Queensland, half of an increase expected to be announced late this month has already been linked to renewables.

ENDS