Consumers look to rooftop solar and batteries amid energy market chaos

There’s nothing like an energy price crisis to re-focus the consumer on home solar and batteries.

The latest monthly data from industry analyst SunWiz shows the rooftop PV market rebounded in May, with 215MW of new capacity installed by home and small businesses.

That compares to the 26% decline that was recorded in April, when a total of 172MW was installed on rooftops around the country, down 62MW on the 234MW total for March.

As the SunWiz chart below shows, the month-on-month trend for new sub-100kW solar capacity in Australia is doing its best solar-coaster impression, as the push and pull of so many different market factors come to bear.

The latest drama, sky high wholesale energy prices and the resulting impact on household bills, appears to have served as a tail-wind for solar in May, bumping installs back up to levels seen in February and March – although in year-on-year terms May 2022 remains 26% behind May 2021.

And, as Nigel Morris notes in this week’s episode of the Solar Insiders Podcast, it seems to be having a similar effect on home storage, with reports from the industry that customers are “begging” for batteries, to make the most of their self-generation and minimise draw from an increasingly unpredictable grid.

Interestingly, SunWiz’s May data shows customers installing more panels, too – with the average system size for May increasing to 8.83kW – the second-highest figure reported over the last 12 months, following a spike in December.

It will be interesting to see if these patterns continue as more and more households and small businesses start to get stung with higher bills, with the impending increase in the default market offer in the new financial year.

Things to watch out for include boosted solar uptake in NSW – which led the march upwards in May, too – off the back of the state government’s increased subsidy for low-income households.

On the flip-side, watch for a possible slow-down in South Australia after that state’s bizarre dumping of its PV rebate and wind-back of the battery subsidy.

Sophie Vorrath

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.