Solar Citizens believes this week’s decision by the Essential Services Commission of South Australia (ESCOSA) to remove the minimum price for solar exports is out of step with regulators nationally and shows an absolute lack of understanding in the South Australian electricity market – and a blatant disregard for solar owners – 197,500 households across the state.

What we need right across the country is a real, fair dinkum price for solar that recognises all of the benefits that solar provides.

South Australia’s electricity companies will no longer be required to pay households with solar panels for the excess power generated by their rooftop units that they feed into the electricity grid.

Tens of thousands of solar owners in South Australia will now be offered nothing for their excess solar sent to the grid and that is a loss for all electricity consumers in South Australia.

The decision will affect the 197,500 households with solar in South Australia, particularly the 60,000 households that lost their 16c guaranteed price through the Solar Bonus Scheme earlier this year.

The wealthy and powerful handful of companies who run power in the State will then on sell the power that these solar households produce at a premium, while the primary producer of that power makes nothing, zero.

This is a clear demonstration of a broken market – an electricity market in desperate need of reform.

Any rational examination of the rates on offer by the large retail electricity companies cannot escape the fact that only two of them are offering rates above the minimum rate.

This market the big power companies operate in, and indeed seem to have huge influence over, is obviously broken and it clearly favours maintaining the market dominance of power producers of the past.

All of these energy companies have deliberately designed their contracts to be complex and difficult for the ordinary consumer to discern which one is the best value overall eg – a higher feed-in tariff could be undermined by other features in the contract.