Rex Leighton spent $8,000 installing solar
panels on his Wollongong home.
To look to have longer term smaller electricity
bills and secondly, as a desire to try and
move towards renewable energy and we wanted
to be a part of that.
After just four and a half years, they are
headed for the tip.
It made me feel a bit sick really because
the warranty was for 10 years on the product
and we were expecting a substantially longer
time than that.
The 20-panel system had been damaged by water.
These can't be fixed. There's no way of reversing
the issue that they have with them.
They are basically just dead panels.
Johann Fleury's company is taking down the
panels and replacing them.
A large amount of those earlier panels, since
I'd say 2008 all the way till probably about
2014, a lot of those panels that have gone
up on roofs, have come back down off roofs.
Johann is just one of dozens of solar installers
7.30 has spoken to who say poor quality rooftop
solar is all too common.
You'll have bottom of the barrel sort of guys
going out there and smashing it out and trying
to get it in as best as possible and as quick
as possible for as little money as possible
but they're the systems that are likely to
last two years and then I'll be there, going
there and replacing those systems and I don't
want to be doing that.
One of the industry's peak bodies, the Clean
Energy Council, has the power to accredit
solar products and installers.
Last year the council suspended 160 solar
installers and cancelled the accreditations
of 12 more.
It also struck more than 5,500 models of solar
panel off its list of approved products.
So the solar industry does have its dark horse.
There's a lot of things that are wrong or
negative within the solar industry.
As a consumer it is very hard to tell what
you've bought.
Consumers are sometimes getting what they
think they're getting and sometimes not.
In Canberra, Dr Michelle McCann runs one of
the few laboratories in Australia that conducts
commercial testing of solar panels.
She's measuring how much electricity a panel
can produce from a single flash of light.
You can't tell by looking at the outside of
a panel whether it's going to be good or bad,
and you can't tell by looking at the brand
name of a panel whether it's going to be good
or bad.
We've had the same brands performing well
and also poorly and they are brand names that
you would expect to perform well.
In some tests, new panels have produced about
10 per cent less energy than their advertised
rating.
To my mind, it raises questions then about
what that panel's going to do after one year,
or three or five, let alone 25 years in the
field.
She says manufacturers overseas are sending
poor quality batches of solar panels to Australia,
believing they will never get caught.
Australian consumers are notorious, and they
are known overseas, for caring a lot about
price and for not caring very much about quality,
and when that happens you get the cheaper
product and the cheaper product isn't the
better performing product.
Do you think Australia has a problem with
low quality solar that has been installed
in the past, that is still on people's roofs?
No, I don't think Australia has a problem
and I think what we've got here is a minimum
standard that ensures safety and a minimal
level of quality for solar systems.
About one in five homes has rooftop solar.
Australia's Clean Energy Regulator has inspected
just over 1 per cent of them.
Of those, one in six installations was found
to be substandard and one in 30, unsafe.
Late last year the Australian National Audit
Office (ANAO) found it is likely there would
be hundreds of thousands of substandard installations
and tens of thousands of unsafe solar systems
across the country.
The Clean Energy Regulator declined an interview
with 7.30 but the Clean Energy Council says
the vast majority of solar systems are safe
and an unsafe rating is not as bad as it sounds.
Well, we need to be clear firstly that this
categorisation is about potentially unsafe
systems and we're obviously very focussed
on continuing to reduce that number and the
regulatory framework in place that applies
to the product and also the way in which it
is installed, we believe is working and that's
because the number of unsafe systems is continuing
to reduce over time.
State and territory authorities conduct their
own checks on rooftop solar but some are more
comprehensive than others.
In Victoria, Tasmania and the ACT, authorities
inspect every system that is installed.
While in some other states, there are regimes
of targeted inspections.
But 7.30 understands that some states have
become increasingly dissatisfied with the
national regulator's testing regime.
An explosion has destroyed a home in Ellenbrook.
He believes it was the homes solar power inverter
that went off.
Had the solar panels connected to lithium
ion batteries in the garage for around a
year and suspects that the fire began somewhere
near the batteries.
My role is to determine cause and origin of
fires.
At Melbourne's Metropolitan Fire Brigade,
fire investigator Steve Attard, is working
in the evidence room.
He is sorting through the remains of a solar
system that was responsible for a house fire
late last year.
In the last five years we've had 25 fires
approximately involving solar systems.
People are losing their homes.
Both the fire brigade and the regulator have
pointed to problems with a safety measure
that was introduced about 15 years ago.
It is a switch to shut off the flow of power
from solar panels called a DC isolator.
This is a DC isolator that was up in the roof
...
The units can be damaged by water and then
catch fire spreading across the roof before
anyone notices.
Certain brands have been recalled but there
is still a great number of the old isolators
built out there in service which, at some
point in time, will pose a risk.
The Clean Energy Council has been calling
for a review of the requirement for rooftop
DC isolators because we think it is an appropriate
point in time to reflect on the intent of
these devices and indeed, the extent to which
they are actually making the system safer.
Are they making solar systems less safe?
Well, I don't think there is any evidence
of that at this point in time.
Attractive government subsidies have driven
the massive growth in demand for rooftop solar.
Now there are fears that Australia could repeat
the same mistakes with the next big boom in
household energy - home batteries.
The National Audit Office has found the risks
of batteries include electric shock, gas explosion
and fire.
About 60,000 batteries have already been connected
but Australia still doesn't have an agreed
minimum safety standards for their installation.
The Clean Energy Council has accredited almost
1,000 people to install home batteries.
Do you think the market then has got ahead
of regulation?
Home batteries are fundamentally very safe.
And we need to remember that these type of
batteries have been used in cars for many,
many years, electric vehicles.
They're also not dissimilar to the batteries
that are in many people's homes in the form
of their cordless power tools.
But the concerns about rooftop solar aren't
just about safety.
Industry veteran Markus Lambert sells high-end
systems and says poor quality solar doesn't
help reduce Australia's carbon emissions.
The problem is in many cases, it hasn't even
gained it's CO2 back by the time its failed,
so you've actually got the irony that we're
paying a rebate for solar that hasn't helped
with abatement.
He too, has teams of installers removing failed
and unsafe solar systems from rooftops.
Right now in Australia, for all those failed
panels, we don't even have a mandatory recycling
scheme.
So when these panels fail, they end up at
the local tip and there is no scheme for recycling
and we have the product failing - that's a
failure.
Given these issues, is Australia's market
for renewable energy working as it should?
One of the big selling points of solar is
the government incentives that reduce the
cost of solar systems, and form the basis
for the national trade in carbon abatement.
When someone installs solar panels, a renewable
energy certificate is created which assumes
the panels will produce clean energy for 12
years but if the solar panels fail after just
a few years, the certificate can still be
bought by a company to offset its emissions.
This market for certificates from rooftop
solar as well as wind and solar farms, is
worth $1.5 billion a year and rising.
We're drawing less from the grid so we are
providing for ourselves a bit.
It's a feel-good thing. It feels good to do
stuff like that, like it feels good, I think.
The Taylors live in Melbourne's west and run
a business making signs for the cities galleries.
Earlier this year they spent about $4,000
on a rooftop solar system.
Most of the retailers I spoke to warned of
the cowboy approach of the installers and
some retailers.
So, you kind of look at that and you just
opt for the ones that are certified by the
Clean Energy Council.
But when John Taylor went to apply for the
Victorian Government's rebate to get half
his money back, he found the rebate program
had suddenly closed just hours before.
And that was at nine o'clock so for a matter
of two and a half hours, if I have of got
up a bit earlier, I probably would have got
a rebate.
It is disappointing that we're not going to
get it but I imagine it would hurt other people
more than us.
Like the two million other homes and businesses
that have invested in rooftop solar, the Taylors
are full of good intentions.
They can only hope they are getting what they
paid for.
There is more work to be done, I don't think
anyone disputes that but again, we need to
reflect on the actual outcomes for householders
here.
The audit data shows that systems are becoming
safer and safer. We've got over two million
Australian households with rooftop solar and
very, very few actual incidents relating to
safety within the industry.
When you put solar installation on your roof,
you're putting a little mini power station
on your roof. You would never, ever build
a coal-fired power plant without doing quality
checks on it but we're doing that with solar
rooftops.
