It's a tradeable certificate represents CO2 emission saving resulting from installing a small scale solar system, its issued and awarded from a government body, called clean energy regulator. In other word, it's a measure of how much CO2 emission your solar system installation will save.
When your small scale solar system installed, calculations will be done by clean energy regulator to indicate how many STCs can be created over the whole life time of your solar system, and of course this is also a measure of how much renewable energy your solar system will generate.
In gross metering, the whole solar system generated electricity will go to the grid, and you will get paid for it as a form of credit shown in the electricity bill. In other word, we can say that in gross metering, it measures the entire output energy separately from your energy consumption, and you pay for electricity bill (energy consumption), and get paid for exported energy, in where no relation in between them “no net”.
After installing the solar system, your electrical energy meter will need to be changed to accommodate the new installation, and the question is; who will be responsible of such changeover? Is it you or solar installation company or electricity company? This point must be clear from the beginning, and usually the solar company will do that job under the supervision of the electricity company.
The solar system rebates that you will get from the solar installation company as a result of selling your STCs certificate is an important point to be discussed, so you will be aware of how mush discount you will get from such STCs certificates.
What aforementioned assumed that you own your photovoltaic system, and do Not lease nor have it under a purchase agreement. As if you do not own the solar system, then you have to pay for it when the time comes to sell the house, but in that case you will lose much, because you will pay the whole price to the solar company early, and only the other option is to try convincing the buyer to take the contract with the solar company over. Mostly, the new house owner will agree to take the contract, but if not, then you will get in stuck.
What will be the expected annual generated electricity (kwh) form your solar system as a whole? And will your solar system installation company be ready to provide written statement about that. That is the strict performance indication, and if the solar company provide such statement, then be rest assured your system will be of high performance and efficiency.
The solar installation company has to agree with you before installation who will be responsible of repair and replacements costs if needed. This point should be clear and documented.
The most important step is that you have to make sure that your solar company will be in charge of installation, installing metering device, and to connect solar photovoltaic system with the grid. Solar company invoice you have to pay should have the prices of these tasks and all relevant works. However, in general, the electricity company will supply such solar energy meter and install or supervise on its installation.
After installing the solar energy meter, your solar photovoltaic system is ready to run and produce electricity.
The sun is the greatest power source at all, as the sun energy we receive in one hour could cover our global energy needs for an entire year, but unluckily we are not able to harvest a fraction of this energy! Through solar panels we are just able to convert very small amount of sun energy to electricity. However solar panels technology has been developed in recent years drastically, providing higher efficiency solar panels, and we are sure there will be continuous improvements.
Let’s us summarize the pross and cons of the solar energy.
