The dominant commercial model for rooftop solar PV has the individual house holder owning the panels and getting the resulting income/free power. In this post it is argued that it may make sense to give home owners the option of leasing rooftop space to power companies who own the panels and the power produced by the panels. Advantages of this approach include the reduction of power costs by making it easier to use competitive tendering to set the feed in tariff, allowing a mix of location and panel orientation better suited to the needs of the total power supply system as well as providing an income stream for home owners who cannot afford to buy panels.
Breaking News:
Since I first started talking about the advantages of competitive tendering for the supply of clean electricity , the ACT introduced their "Reverse Auction" for driving investment in large scale solar. I don't know all the details of their system except that it is a competitive tendering system.
I have now found this article in the Australian (Giles Parkinson 7 Sept 2012) that announced that the ACT auction process had reached the point where the first contract has been awarded to Spanish group FRV for a lower than expected fixed price of 18.6 cents/kWh for 20 yrs. This price may seem a bit high but, based on Qld experience it should actually reduce ACT power bills by replacing more expensive sources of day-time power. End of breaking news.
