CLIMATE SPECTATOR: Solar lessons, learned the hard way

The remnants of what was once Australia's largest independent rooftop solar installer, SolarShop, have finally been sold, completing a salutary tale about how not to run a clean energy policy.

By Giles Parkinson ·
30 Nov 2011

Climate Spectator

The remnants of what was once Australia's largest independent rooftop solar installer, SolarShop, have finally been sold – to Melbourne-based Premier Solar – completing a salutary tale about how not to run a clean energy policy in this country, and possibly also how not to manage a business in response.

The Adelaide-based SolarShop has been the biggest victim, so far, of the boom-bust scenario caused by ill-considered rooftop solar policy measures, driven by political vanity and a basic lack of due diligence – the most recent is Queensland-based firm Solarcore, which was placed into administration last week. Those most at fault are the former NSW Labor government, for its absurdly generous feed-in tariff (which has probably stuffed any prospect of a sensibly struck national tariff for good) and for not keeping tabs on the bill, and the federal Labor government for taking bad advice (mostly from a utility that might have known better) in the structure of the solar multiplier – which had the added impact of effectively putting a freeze on the deployment of large-scale renewable energy projects.

SolarShop collapsed in dramatic circumstances in September when its principal bankers took fright at the state of its inventory management and its working capital, an issue that had arisen after the dramatic policy pirouettes and bloody mindedness of the new NSW Coalition government, and appointed James Shady, a partner at Ferrier Hodgson, as receiver.