On the issue of Solar Rebates I am not convinced we need them at all but still they may save a lot more money on building new power stations in the future.
Having used solar power for over 20 years and installing systems on the big island I can comment on the debate as such.
What we need is to learn to use Less.
Most households use far too much electricity,
Most industries use far too much electricity.
The solution to future power shortages is to have them. It will encourage consumers to get of their backsides and do something about their over consumption.
Hot water for example accounts for 40% or more of domestic power bills and a huge amount of electricity is used in industrial process heating.
Instead of building new power stations, more dams, more wind generators etc, we should be building state owned factories that employ people building solar hot water sysetems. They can be retro fitted to every house in Tasmania for a start and the cost could be taken from the power bills, when the system is paid for then the power bills would drop by 40% or so.
Industry could be next.
It costs us $93 million per annum just to be connected to the National Electricity grid via Basslink, so as we already have the cable we should save power here and be an energy exporter.
If we never put the cable in the $93 million would have been enough to fit solar hot water to every house in Tasmania in the first year.
But as we have the cable why not take advantage and be a world leader in renewables.
Train people in power saving, install Solar Hot Water, and export our excess power

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  ahhh pete ! that’s called lateral thinking ! and i’m afraid that pollies don’t appear to be able understand that concept !
                d.d.