Setting the standards: Why consumer energy resources deserve a better policy approach than “Ready, Fire, Aim”

As general manager of SolarQuotes, Trevor Glen is no stranger to consumer energy resources but even his deep expertise in solar panels to batteries and even heat pumps didn’t shield his Adelaide home from a recent electric fire that might have incinerated it.

An electric fault – unrelated to his solar and storage devices – ignited a blaze in his garage, close to his family’s battery stack and electric vehicle.

Fortunately, Glen’s wife was at home, and noticed the power had gone off. Venturing outside she heard a popping noise and on inspection, found flames reaching as high as a metre. She called the fire brigade and they arrived in time.

“The batteries could have caught fire, the car could have caught fire, and then the house would have burnt down,” Glen tells Renew Economy about the event 10 days ago.

Glen will likely detail the lessons learnt on SolarQuotes’ blog, including the value of installing smoke detectors in garages. But his broader takeaway is that even with top-quality products and expert installers, things can go awry when devices involve high current and high wattage.

These issues have gathered fresh attention this week, including the Albanese government’s decision on which body will take lead oversight of the technical regulations for consumer energy resources, as Renew Economy reported here. Friday’s Energy and Climate Ministerial Council (ECMC) meeting will decide how that lands.

While it’s understood the government will ensure a role for the Clean Energy Regulator in providing oversight of consumer resources, it will be the federal department of climate change, energy, the environment and water (DCCEEW) that set the technical definitions.

The prominent involvement by DCCEEW surprised advocates of the distributed energy resources sector.

“How do you hold the federal department responsible for its methods?” was one expert’s view. “All stakeholders wanted an independent body to set the regulatory standards.”

A post-ECMC briefing for stakeholders will detail what the ministers have agreed upon. How much responsibility sits with the department – rather than the Clean Energy Regulators – will be assessed closely by those being briefed.

States such as Victoria are understood to have been pressing DCCEEW about CER concerns for more than a year.

Victoria designed its Solar Homes program in 2018 to ensure it learnt from the so-called “pink batts fiasco” that resulted from the poorly designed and managed Rudd government effort to ensure homes had better insulation.

Solar Victoria, for instance, inspects every battery and solar system that goes in. One concern was that if the federal government didn’t manage these programs well, the states and their own energy regulators would unfairly cop the blame. And the federal Coalition is clearly itching to make a meal out of any incidents.

By coincidence, we saw this week that the Clean Energy Regulator (CER) had fined a Melbourne solar installer for fraudulent conduct. The ABC also revealed that a large solar installer was under investigation.

For the federal government’s part, climate change and energy minister Chris Bowen argued that the incidence of poor work, while regrettable, were very minimal compared with the size of the scheme.

After all, we have millions of homes with solar, and more than half a million homes have added energy storage in the 14 months the Cheaper Home Battery scheme has operated.

Bowen said he could guarantee all batteries had been installed under the Small-scale renewable energy scheme – “one of the world’s most rigorous schemes for compliance, which has been operating under governments of both persuasions” since 2011.

Bowen told parliament the SRES had received a total of 315 complaints over the past year across solar panel installations, battery installations and solar hot water installations.

“That is 0.04 per cent of 800,000 installations in the last 12 months,” Bowen said. “Of those complaints, 106 matters were referred for other enforcement and 17 matters have needed to be progressed for formal investigations.

“That’s 17 out of more than 530,000 cheaper home battery installations and 800,000 others. That’s 0.002 per cent of installed systems referred for formal investigation and 0.01 per cent referred to other enforcement agencies.”

Finn Peacock, the founder of SolarQuotes, told Renew Economy the industry had a spectrum from high quality devices and expert installers who configured equipment well, to those who did a poor job configuring and installing products of lesser quality.

“I expect there are hundreds of thousands of systems that are not optimally installed or configured,” with some carrying the potential for “dangerous” outcomes, Peacock said.

He noted that the government subsidy for a 50 kiloWatt-hour battery amounted to as much as $18,000 before the scheme was pared back. “Why wasn’t a $300 inspection added” to the program?

Apart from Victoria, inspections were sporadic. Many consumers may be getting a poorer result than they might have rightly expected, Peacock said.

The rush to get the equipment installed resembled a policy of “ready, fire, aim”, he said.

Given consumers are footing the bill for these energy resources – whether directly, or via their taxes – it’s important that we have best governance practice in place. Shortfalls will be obvious – and potentially be costly for many years – if we don’t.

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