We know Australia is leading the world in per capita uptake of rooftop solar, with total installed capacity on homes and businesses this year soaring past the 6GW mark.
But which parts of Australia are leading the country? New data from the Clean Energy Regulator has revealed the latest ranking of Australia’s top 10 postcodes for small-scale solar installation (up to 100kW), with some interesting new additions.
As you can see below, the list this year features a few new entries, and a more diverse spread across the states, instead of being dominated by Queensland and Western Australia locales.
Both the new entries and the old stagers on the list span the suburban, regional and rural areas of Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia, with no entries this year from South Australia, Tasmania, the ACT or the Northern Territory.
In order from the top, the Queensland town of Bundaberg has again secured the number one spot, followed by new entries on the list, the Victorian suburbs of Werribee and Hoppers Crossing. Last year, no Victorian postcodes made the top 10.
According to the CER data, these three postcodes have accumulated the highest number of small-scale renewable energy installations since the small-scale renewable energy scheme began in 2001, each reaching around 17 000 installations as at 1 September 2017.
In fourth place, down from second place last year, is the WA suburb of Mandurah, where the local council is also pushing hard to install PV on government buildings – and just last week agreed to install a 200kW (not a part of the SRES) system at the local pool and sports centre.
The Queensland suburb of Hervey Bay follows, moving to fifth place from third last year. And another Victorian new entry, the semi-rural south-eastern suburb of Cranbourne, is in sixth place.
Bringing up the rear are regular place holders Caloundra and Toowoomba in Queensland, and new entries Wangara (WA) and Lismore (NSW), the latter of which makes the list probably due to the May switching-on of a 99kW rooftop PV system at the Goonellabah Sports & Aquatic Centre, as part of a major community-based and funded renewables campaign.
Despite some bigger commercial installations coming into play, the CER says the average size of the solar postcode installations is 5kW – which is also the average size, now, of a household rooftop solar system. This indicates the dominance, still, of residential uptake in these numbers, considering the SRES encourages commercial systems, too – up to 100kW in size.
“Over the last 10 years, 23 per cent more Australians have embraced rooftop solar,” the CER said in a release on Monday. “That’s one in five homes and businesses now generating their own renewable energy and reducing carbon emissions through rooftop solar.
As we reported here, Australia hit a milestone of 6000 megawatt (6GW) capacity across 2.8 million small-scale installations of renewable energy systems such as solar PV, solar water heaters and air source heat pumps. Nearly 100MW was installed in August, alone.
Interestingly, while no South Australian suburbs on their own make the list, the entire state is setting all sorts of solar records, including a new record low for minimum demand – barely a week after the previous benchmark was set – with a fall to just 587MW on Sunday afternoon.
As Giles Parkinson notes, the record eclipsed the previous mark by nearly 200MW – with AEMO data showing minimum demand at 1.30pm of exactly 587.8MW, compared with the previous low mark of 786.42MW posted last Sunday – thanks to moderate spring temperatures, combined with the state’s more than 700MW of rooftop solar producing 538.54MW at the time of minimum demand.
“That is a phenomenal share of 47.8 per cent of the state’s electricity demand being met by rooftop solar (compares with 36 per cent in the previous record last week) and is clearly a record for South Australia, and for that matter in any large grid anywhere in the world,” Parkinson says.
Below is the list of last year’s Top 10 solar postcodes:
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.
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Sitting in what I believe was the first retrofitted fossil-fuel-free grid-connected house in Hoppers Crossing I do not believe the comparative year-on-year figures provided above demonstrate what is being claimed of them.
Postcodes 3029 (Hoppers Crossing, Tarneit and Truganina) and 3030 (mainly Werribee, Point Cook, Derrimut and Werribee South) cover large areas of outer suburbia with high populations living almost exclusively in stand-alone houses. While PV installation has been very noticeable for a least the last eight there was no spectacular increase in the last 12 months. I don’t know what happened with last year’s figures but we have long known that our two large postcodes led Victoria in the raw numbers of PV systems, while Shepparton has been the leader for the percentage of dwellings with PV systems. I suspect that we are now close to having 20% of dwellings in our area with PVs installed, with Shepparton about half that again.
Installing PVs has significant momentum, and it benefits from word of mouth good experiences and it very noticeable around here that there are areas where most neighbours have independently installed them. Those who have been paying attention know that it is not only a good thing to do but provided you have or can access the finance they are a very sensible financial investment as well.
Overall, we are about a medium-income area for Melbourne but we do have high outer-suburban costs in what are still largely dormitory suburbs even if we are now visioning something else.
It’s never been a secret that if you’re looking for the epicentre of PV installation don’t go to Kew, Point Piper, Peppy Grove or toher places with little concern over energy costs.
Reframing Bro’s comment a little more directly, surely it would be more interesting to see the top 10 solar PER CAPITA or PER HOUSEHOLD postcodes.
Would be an interesting experiment to install identical 3MW/12MWh (4hr) storage battery at the top 10 PV post codes at the local substations.
The experiment is to work on the ideal algorithm for management of the battery storage, demand response and cost optimizations. At the same time the substation battery system electronics should be capable of power factor correction and phase balancing.
By designing the ‘same’ equipment should give savings in the technical support and lower the unit costs with a goal of rolling out to further sites.