Loretta Egan, South Golden Beach
The Australian Energy Market Commission (AEMC) has recently ruled that networks will be allowed to charge solar households a sun tax for sharing their clean energy. State governments can still stop this unfair attack on solar, but I imagine Gladys and co are concentrating their efforts on something else right now.
Walking around my neighbourhood, it seems that about half of the houses have rooftop solar. I wonder how many of the owners are aware of this proposal?
Rooftop solar benefits all energy consumers by providing cheap, local energy to the grid and bringing down wholesale power prices. The new energy rules give all the power to networks without strong enough safeguards to protect consumers.
Solar households will have to pay up or have their ability to export slashed. This could lead to less renewable energy in the grid. Non-solar households will see a bill saving of just 30c a week, but solar households could lose most of their income from their solar investment.
It is unfair to charge solar homes and businesses when big coal and gas generators don’t have to pay for pumping electricity into the network. Feed-in tariffs are already dropping around the country. We should be encouraging more rooftop solar – not penalising people who are trying to cut their energy bills and do their bit for the environment by putting panels on their roof.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
