New Notice to Market to support growing demand for solar

The annual Notice to Market provides the solar industry in Victoria with the standards and requirements it must meet to be able to be part of Solar Victoria’s programs, committing everyone involved to continue improving safety and quality standards, while protecting customers and workers.

With five new mandatory requirements and seven new recommendations, the latest Notice to Market will help to ensure systems installed under the Solar Homes and Solar for Business programs are future-ready and strengthen consumer protections.

To enable an expanded grid export capability, it will be mandatory from 1 March 2024 for solar PV inverters installed under the Solar Homes and Solar for Business programs to be 'dynamic export’ capable to allow for the future implementation of dynamic export arrangements by Distributed Network Service Providers (DNSPs).

A solar PV system installed today will likely not include an inverter capable of modulating how much solar energy is exported to the grid. Without this ‘dynamic export’ functionality, DNSPs may set a low static export limit, which can result in solar energy not being utilised.

To address this problem, the Notice to Market requires installed systems to implement the Common Smart Inverter Profile (CSIP)-AUS and IEEE 2030.5 protocol to increase solar PV generation exported to the grid while maintaining grid stability.

Effective 1 March 2024, solar PV inverters must be listed on Clean Energy Council’s Approved Inverter list as an Inverter with Software Communication Clients that is compliant to CSIP-AUS and IEEE 2030.5.

New mandatory requirements are aimed at maximising the self-consumption of excess solar through electric hot water systems and heat pumps including mandating timers to optimise solar self-consumption and ensuring suitability and quality of heat pumps for climatic conditions and suitable sizing.

This year’s NTM strengthens retailers’ ability to respond to product safety recalls; and strengthening consumer protections through warranties, as well as mandating the requirement for all solar PV and battery retailers to be New Energy Tech Approved Sellers.

New recommendations relate to improving grid integration, solar grid hosting and safety through compliance with the relevant standards; improving performance warranties for solar PV panels and batteries; ensuring appropriately sized hot water heat pumps are installed; and enabling customers to view their solar generation and energy consumption.

The Notice to Market 2023–24 comes into effect on 1 July 2023, with some requirements coming into effect at later dates. The current Notice to Market remains in effect until 30 June 2023.

To read the Solar Victoria Notice to Market 2023–24, visit: solar.vic.gov.au/notice-to-market-2023-24

Quotes attributable to Solar Victoria CEO Stan Krpan

“Solar Victoria has since its inception worked closely with the solar industry and peak bodies to lift standards and shape the market for solar to the benefit of Victorian customers.”

“With the speed of innovation in solar and technologies supported under Solar Homes and the dynamic market we work in it is important that we are always looking to the future and maximising the benefits for our solar customers and integration with the transforming electricity grid”.

“Increasing demand and uptake of solar and heat pumps and the growing interest in electrification, means that our new and existing requirements and recommendations are ambitious and ensure the right settings are in place.”

“The new requirements will help deliver the best safety and quality outcomes for Victorians who are enthusiastically making the move to all-electric homes.”

“We have worked with industry to understand their readiness and to ensure adequate time is in place to support industry’s adjustment to the new requirements introduced in this Notice to Market.”