Civil groups on Monday called for changes to regulations governing the installation of solar panels on existing buildings to provide better incentives for communities and familiarize the public with renewable energy.
With a government-convened review committee this week to decide renewable energy feed-in tariff (FIT) rates for next year, several groups called for incentives for solar panels on residential rooftops to be increased by raising the FIT for smaller installations.
The FIT rate for rooftop solar energy capacity is divided into four intervals, with the smallest being 1 kilowatt (kW) to 20kW, or about NT$5.8 per kW-hour, and the largest being more than 500kW (about NT$4 per kW-hour).
Photo: Chu Pei-hsiung, Taipei Times
The groups called the introduction of a new interval of 1kW to 10kW, with the rate raised to NT$6 per kW-hour.
As most residential buildings in Taiwan have rooftop space of about 160m2, excluding space needed for other installations, there is less than 99m2 for rooftop solar panels per building on average, or a maximum capacity of about 10kW, they said.
Homemakers’ United Foundation director Wu Hsin-ping (吳心萍) said that as installing panels for 10kW requires the same fixed costs as for 20kW or 30kW, including cranes, labor, panel transportation and administrative fees, the cost per kilowatt is higher for a 10kW installation.
Increasing the FIT for installations of 10kW or below is necessary to increase incentives for residential communities to embrace renewable energy projects, Wu said.
The calculation is based on the experience of a cooperative for community renewable energy projects in Chiayi that has about 33 projects, two-thirds of which are below 10kW, she said.
Successful projects often attract many communities to visit and learn, as the one in Chiayi has, she said.
Liu Ru-yi (劉如意), a researcher at the Green Citizens’ Action Alliance, said that although the time and energy spent communicating with communities about setting up rooftop solar panels can be hard to quantify, it is necessary.
“Once the installations are made, the social benefit is huge,” Liu said.
Cheng Tai-chin (鄭泰鈞), a member of Citizens of the Earth, Taiwan, said that as solar power plants often face multiple challenges and controversies when built on farmland, rooftop systems are a way for the government to simultaneously familiarize the public with renewable energy and increase renewable power generation.
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