Solar Fringe and Reports

Last Saturday, The Age newspaper (not yet dominated by that rich lady GR) published an interesting article "Out on the fringe, solar comes of age" by environment editor Adam Morton. In the article, Adam comments on the large number of solar Photo-voltaic(PV) panels adorning so many roofs in the outer Western Melbourne suburbs.
We have noticed the same in our suburb, lower midle class outer suburban. Even over the last year, the number of houses showing solar PV panels seems almost to have doubled. Obviously even the lower middle class suburbanites have found the current deals attractive.
The subsidies have now dropped off so the incentives must be the Carbon Tax (which is the point of the Tax) and the clear price drop in the cost of purchase and installation. Supply and demand, market forces in action, spurred on by massive investment in panel production by China.
A report by the Australia Institute, 11 Nov 2010, (The Australian Government's solar PV rebate program by Andrew Macintosh and Deb Wilkinson) a couple of years ago, criticized the Federal Government scheme by saying the lower socioeconomic group were not participating.
I commented then -in  Solar Power and Costs  - that China's production would drop prices dramatically. In the Age article, the ATA energy policy manager, Damien Moyse comments that he has changed his advice to members. Things have moved so fast that "it now makes more sense to put solar on your roof than buy electricity from the grid according to Ray Wills, Sustainable Energy Association advisor" as quoted in the Age article.
While the poorest, and those renting, have not participated, the next rung up in the socioeconomic scale have clearly seen the benefits of generating some of their own power. Infrastructure savings are thus the result as well as a reduction in exposure to price increases in electricity.
So the solar market may very well be at the stage of price parity with the Electricity grid but support for Feed-In-Tariffs may well fade from various levels of governemts. We shall see, as I still think "Power from the People" should be charged at the same rate as Power from the Grid. The final report has now been submitted so we shall see what the Victorian Government response will be.