Australia’s rooftop solar market looks to be sitting pretty at its record installation rate, that puts it roughly 38 per cent ahead of the same time in 2018 – itself a record year.
The latest data from solar market analysts SunWiz shows the market has more or less hit a steady rate of installations, with a total of 175MW of residential and commercial PV for the month of August.
As you can see in the SunWiz chart below, installation volumes have stayed in this ballpark – fluctuating somewhere between 150MW and 200MW – since October last year.
“Looking back over the past year, the market has effectively plateaued,” said SunWiz managing director Warwick Johnston in his Insights report for August 2019.
“Victoria recovered slightly, offset by falls in New South Wales and Queensland that were simply oscillations in commercial PV.”
Johnston notes that “oscillation” in commercial installation rates has led to the falls in the eastern states, offset by residential growth in Victoria.
But he also warns to expect Victoria to show a reversal in September data, due to the impact of the state’s rooftop rebate, which – until government changes last week – had effectively put a cap on the residential solar market.
“The market (is) effectively 38 per cent ahead of the same time last year,” Johnston said.
The data shows that, overall, the residential market grew slightly, and there was an upwards trend in commercial, despite falls in the 10-20kW and 75-100kW segments.
Queensland has emerged as the leading state market for 10-30kW PV installations. And Victoria leads in 30-100kW.
Sophie is editor of One Step Off The Grid and deputy editor of its sister site, Renew Economy. Sophie has been writing about clean energy for more than a decade.
