Getting approval to connect a large solar system takes longer than most people expect, and it’s the thing most likely to hold your installation up. It’s a good idea to understand how it works before you sign anything.

Here’s what’s involved.

Your distributor, not your retailer

The company you buy power from and the company that owns the poles and wires are two different businesses, and it’s the first one that approves your connection.

In Queensland that’s Ergon or Energex, both under Energy Queensland. Ergon covers Toowoomba, Warwick, Roma, Miles, Goondiwindi and most of regional Queensland. Energex covers Ipswich, Gatton and the Lockyer Valley. If you’re over the border around Tenterfield, you’ll be dealing with Essential Energy.

Your retailer has no say in any of this; you can switch retailers tomorrow and it won’t change a thing about your connection.

Why a big system is treated differently

When you put solar on a house, the application is checked against a standard set of rules and usually comes back approved within a week or two. Nothing about it needs in-depth checks.

A system in the hundreds of kilowatts is assessed individually, because the effect it has on the network is much bigger. An engineer has to look at your specific site, on your specific section of line, and work out what happens when you start pushing that much power back into the local grid.

They’re checking four things:

• Whether the voltage on that line stays within legal limits for every other customer once you’re exporting
• Whether the wires and transformers between you and the nearest substation can physically carry it, given they were built to bring power to you rather than take it away
• Whether your protection equipment will disconnect properly if there’s a fault
• Whether any of their own infrastructure needs upgrading before you can go ahead

A lot of the network across the Downs was put in decades ago to supply farms and houses spread out over long distances. Nobody designing it in the 1970s expected several hundred kilowatts coming back up the line from a shed. That’s why these applications take an engineer’s time, and why there’s a queue for them.

How long it takes

This depends almost entirely on what they find when they look at your site.

If you already have a decent supply with capacity to spare, which is more common on big industrial and commercial sites, you may be looking at a few months.

If they decide something needs upgrading before you can connect, it’s considerably longer. That might be a transformer, or a section of line, and in some cases the cost of that work falls to you.

It isn’t only a Queensland problem. The Smart Energy Council surveyed its members earlier this year and found connection processes to be the single biggest barrier to commercial solar across the country. 71 per cent cited slow distributor approval times as a leading challenge, and 82 per cent said connection requirements were the least consistently governed part of the process. One person interviewed for the report described approvals taking five months instead of the five to ten business days they’d expected.

Either way it’s the longest part of the whole installation. Panels, structural work and the electrical are all quicker and more predictable than this. So the connection enquiry is the thing to get moving first, well before you’ve settled on equipment or signed anything.

You might not get a straight yes

There are three answers you can get back, and only one of them is the one everyone expects:

• Approved as you applied for it, which is more likely closer to town and on stronger parts of the network
• Approved with an export limit, meaning you can install the system you wanted but there’s a cap on how much you can send back to the grid, and sometimes that cap is zero
• Approved subject to upgrade works, at your cost

That middle one sounds worse than it usually is. If you’re running irrigation, cold storage, a packing line or a workshop through the day, you’re consuming most of what you generate. Export is a small part of the value for that kind of operation, so a tight export limit doesn’t necessarily hurt the numbers much. What it does mean is that the system should be designed knowing about it, rather than designed first and adjusted later.

The further you are from a substation, the more likely an export limit becomes, because long rural feeders have less room in them. If you’re out around Roma or Goondiwindi, factor that in early rather than being disappointed by it later.

Why it matters more now

The connection approval isn’t only about switching the system on. Under the expanded rebate, evidence of connection approval and engineer reports will be required as part of qualifying for the certificates, the same way they already are under the large-scale scheme.

This means it isn’t a step you can leave until the end and sort out later. It’s part of the paperwork that determines whether the discount applies at all.

The good news is that there’s no longer a rush. For systems between 100kW and 1MW, the previously stepped-down incentive rate has been frozen at five years through to the end of 2030, so waiting on a connection answer doesn’t cost you anything in rebate value. It only costs you time.

What’s changing

When the federal government announced it was lifting the solar rebate cap from 100kW to 1MW, the Energy Minister also said connection delays for commercial systems were unacceptable, and asked the Australian Energy Market Commission to look at requiring distributors to process them faster. He’s also said he’ll be writing to distributors directly in the meantime.

Both would help. Neither will happen soon, since rule changes of that sort take months at minimum. For anyone planning a system in the near future, it’s important to get started now and not wait for system changes.

What to ask whoever quotes you

Ask them whether they’ve lodged a connection enquiry for your site, and what came back.

If they haven’t, or they’re vague about it, the quote in front of you is an estimate built on an assumption. It might turn out fine, but it might also come back with an export limit that changes what the system is actually worth to you, or a transformer upgrade nobody costed in.

Anyone who’s done a few of these will bring up the network before you ask, because it’s the first thing that shapes what they can design for you.

Ready to find out where you stand?

If you’re thinking about a system over 100kW anywhere in Southern Queensland, we can get the connection enquiry lodged and work out the rest while it’s in the queue.

Give us a call on 07 4642 0017 or request a free quote.