Solar industry furious with snap decision to dump rebate

The solar industry has been thrown into chaos after the Federal Government announced yesterday morning that a key solar rebate would end just eight hours later. Federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett announced yesterday morning that the $8000 solar rebate scheme would be closed off at the close of business yesterday, a full three weeks before the rebate was due to end.

Garrett said a flood of interest had caused the cost of the rebate to blow out to $700 million, more than four times the amount the Government had intended to spend.

The rebate system will be replaced by a new tax credit system when legislation goes through Parliament in the next few weeks. The 63,000 solar rebate applications in the pipeline will also be honoured.

But solar panel companies are furious about the way the announcement was handled.

Guy Montgomery, general manager of Queensland company Solar Xpress, describes a day of “absolute chaos” trying to contact customers and process applications.

“We got the information via email at about 11am in the morning. So that gave us four to five hours to talk to customers and get them in here to sign the paperwork. We had to tell them to sign up now or they would miss out.”

“It was absolute chaos. It was absolute mismanagement by Peter Garrett.”

This is just the latest blow for the solar sector, which suffered a sharp slump in revenue after the Rudd Government tightened the access criteria to the $8000 rebate. Montgomery says the sector has become extremely volatile, despite the growing industry in green power.

He hopes the new solar credit scheme will offer the industry a little bit more stability, although companies like his will need to redesign their advertising campaigns and marketing materials to reflect the new regime.

“They’ve assured this will last for at least three to five years,” Montgomery says.