Australia's solar energy hurdles

Shi Zhengrong, founder of the world’s largest photovoltaic solar panel manufacturer, Suntech, was originally from Australia.

The Sun King, as Zhengrong has come to be known, left Australia for China in the early 1990s after the Australian government and public began to show less and less interest in his passion.

While Australia boasts higher solar radiation than any other continent, it captures very little of that solar energy. The country produces only 1.5 megawatts of solar power a year.

In the 1980s and ‘90s, according to an article in the New York Times, Australia had interest in developing renewable energy sources, especially solar energy sources. Some of the world’s most renowned scientists and solar energy researchers were Australian in that time. But the nation had too many hurdles for solar and renewable energy to jump.

It never took off. There are a few reasons for this.

The first, and probably most obvious one, is that Australia has plenty of other energy resources available to it. It’s the world’s largest exporter of coal and used coal-burning power plants to generate more than 80 percent of its energy, according to the New York Times article.

Renewable energy sources have long indicated a significant up-front investment, making it less attractive when compared side by side with cheap and easily-available coal.
Another reason for the hesitance is Australia’s grid.

The massive, desolate outback where researchers are now looking to build wind farms and solar plants, divides the country. The grid has to run through it, but it’s just a long empty space for the power to travel through. It’s not being used or supplied there. As a result, the grid is narrow and small and limited, Australia’s Clean Energy Council head Matthew Warren told the New York Times.

It would not be easy to make new additions to the system or add new power sources.

But the government has decided to try anyway. The Australian legislature approved funding and started an initiative to build enough solar and wind energy plants by 2020 that the country will get 20 percent of its power from renewable sources. It currently gets only 6 percent from solar, hydroelectric, and wind power generation.