The New South Wales Labor party leader Michael Daley has announced that an NSW Labor government, if elected, would help supply half a million new solar systems on NSW roofs, establish a new state-owned power company to deliver a further one gigawatt of renewable energy and storage, and deliver seven gigawatts of extra renewable energy by 2030. This will help power about three million households and cut down the state’s carbon emissions by 12%.
The overall target of 7 gigawatt will be achieved from large scale solar and wind. In the implementation of this plan, there would be a tremendous focus on smart solar solutions.
MarketsandMarkets™ Analyses:
Somik Das – Strategic Growth Analyst : Energy and Power, at MarketsandMarkets™, shares his Point of View as mentioned below:
Smart Solar Market
The pledge of NSW Labor draws interest because of the prospects it holds for the Smart Solar market. Smart solar includes solar solutions for everyday use, including everything from solar heating and ventilation to solar chargers that can charge mobile devices on the go. Globally, smart solutions are linked to the panels to boost their efficiency. These can be in the form of solar inverters or axis-based solar trackers. The deployment of smart solar solutions helps to reduce electricity expenses and increase the efficiency of solar components by real-time monitoring and communication. Smart solar solutions range from standalone asset management, network monitoring, advanced analytics, SCADA, remote metering and outage management to integrated solutions where service providers can provide a holistic solution to the concerned parties. Asset Management, however, forms the major chunk of the smart solar solutions market as it is directly related to the installation and maintenance of ground mount and rooftop solar photovoltaic cells. It also includes the integration of data from various business processes and collating it all in a central system in the process. This, in turn, increases the overall system efficiency. The asset management segment of the global Smart Solar market is expected to grow at the highest CAGR during 2018–2023. With the increasing adoption of green energy and smart cities initiatives, the demand for smart solar solutions has grown tremendously across all the countries. NSW Labor’s green energy plans will be a major boost for the smart solar solutions market in Australia.
The global residential segment, under the by application category, is expected to grow at the highest CAGR during 2018-2023. This segment is highly fragmented, and globally the awareness and understanding of the benefits and incentives of installing smart solar solutions are not very clear to the residential customers. The planned installation of solar systems on NSW roofs holds the promise of spreading that awareness. The installation of solar panels may also prove to be a source of income for few commercial as well as residential customers, who lend their space for the installation of solar systems. The installation of smart meters and other smart solar solutions is increasing, and this trend is expected to continue in the near future.
Smart Solar Market by Application
e- Estimated; p- Projected
Source: MarketsandMarkets™ Analysis
Giant leaps expected in wind energy generation and smart solar solutions
In the present scenario wind energy is generated both onshore and offshore. Onshore wind electricity generation technology has evolved over the last five years to maximize the electricity produced per megawatt capacity installed, to unlock more sites with lower wind speeds. China leads this segment followed by the United States, Europe, and India. Onshore wind electricity generation is expected to increase by nearly 65% globally during the period 2018-2023. Offshore wind electricity generation is also expected to grow rapidly. Benefits of offshore wind generation are the presence of better wind resources than land-based sites. Therefore, new offshore turbines can achieve significantly more full-load hours compared with the onshore ones.
The smart solar market is ensuring that the increasing amount of generation is being utilized efficiently. Solar Photovoltaic’s record growth of 98 GW in 2017 was driven by China’s rapid deployment of 53 GW of solar energy, which is massively supported by economically attractive feed-in tariffs and smart solar solutions.
Conclusion:
The plans of NSW Labor would involve a huge investment of 9.5 billion Australian Dollars. In this scenario, asset management is of critical importance as large solar and rooftop PV installations will be largely responsible for producing a major chunk of the massive generation. Solar project finance management by the Renewable Energy Service Companies (RESCOs) will be of key importance in this case. A key strategy, in the selection of the project proponent, is to have reverse bidding. Through this strategy, a competitive pricing regime can be followed. This strategy will also ensure that the market has healthy competition.