Experts chip in on continuing renewables and nuclear debate

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Rooftop solar has been around for many years. But its popularity is evergreen with many act residents installing it to save on their power bills. This comes as energy continues to be a hot topic for federal election voters.

Transcript

00:00Most of the roof is covered.

00:04When Russell Mowbray decided to renovate his Tuggeranong home, solar panels were the

00:09top of his list.

00:10I absolutely love it.

00:11It's not like a conscious decision now that we have to go and turn the air conditioning

00:16off or we can't use the heating.

00:18We can live comfortably without it being an excessive cost.

00:22Mr Mowbray runs a home renovation company and every customer he sees asks him about

00:27solar.

00:28It's fine and most people are pretty comfortable putting solar on because that's a nice easy

00:33quick way to help them out with bills basically.

00:36That's the end game.

00:39A third of all ACT homes have solar panels installed and the price for an average system is currently

00:44the cheapest in the country.

00:46Over the last 10 years the upfront cost to install an average sized system in the ACT has nearly

00:52halved.

00:53By about 5-7 years the system will be fully paid off.

00:57It's been a big shift in a relatively small amount of time.

01:00When I started solar energy was a very small endeavour.

01:05Small panels in remote areas and on satellites and today it is a global juggernaut.

01:11The source and cost of our power is a big federal election issue.

01:15The federal opposition says nuclear should be a key component of Australia's mix despite

01:20research demonstrating it would be significantly more expensive for consumers.

01:24So you would be taking a lot of the cost of that onto the government balance sheet which means

01:30that either we're paying higher taxes, we're borrowing more money and pushing more debt

01:35onto future generations or we're accepting lower government services.

01:38Some researchers do support a nuclear power industry for Australia and say we have the know-how to do it.

01:45It does things that no other producer of electricity can do for example.

01:52It will produce electricity with very high security, very high availability irrespective

01:57of the weather conditions or whether it's day or night.

01:59But Canberrans are looking to cut their energy bills now.

02:03Most people just they're looking to where they can save money and typically the sun's number one.

02:09An increasingly popular way to save on power.

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