Australia installed another 125MW of small-scale rooftop solar in the month of September, taking the total for calendar 2018 to 1.09GW and beating the 2017 total with three months left in the year.
Latest data from industry statistician SunWiz shows the level of installations dropped off in September, but still managed to post the fifth-best month on record. Total small scale solar installations now top 7.5GW.
“In the first 9 months of 2018, we’ve already exceeded the volume registered in any previous year,” SunWiz director Warwick Johnston noted. “We’ve also doubled the volume installed by the same time in 2016.”
Queensland regained its ranking as the top market for the latest month with just over 32MW, pipping NSW (which had held the mantle for a few months, and Victoria (26GW).
WA now has 990MW and is likely to surpass 1GW during the month of October, becoming the fourth state to reach that milestone after Queensland (now 2.2GW), NSW (1.7GW), and Victoria (1.4GW).
South Australia is not too far behind, with some 938MW installed by the end of September, and is likely to go through the 1GW mark early next year.
This, as we have reported, is already having an impact on wholesale prices, with negative prices now being recorded in the middle of the day in Queensland, Western Australia and South Australia.
Giles Parkinson is founder and editor of One Step Off The Grid, and also edits and founded Renew Economy and The Driven. He has been a journalist for 35 years and is a former business and deputy editor of the Australian Financial Review.
