Home solar installs get a kick out of power price panic

Growing consumer concern about the impact of rising electricity prices is returning Australia’s rooftop solar market back to levels much closer to the numbers recorded in installation boom-times, new data has shown.

Figures from Green Energy Markets show that Australian homes and businesses installed a total of 253MW of solar panels on rooftops in September, which is slightly down on August (265MW), but back up to levels recorded in September 2020.

Of the 253MW of new rooftop PV capacity installed for the month, Green Energy Markets notes that 204MW of this was residential, and 49MW commercial, suggesting households are leading the charge in looking for ways to insulate against power price spikes.

Installs were down by small percentages on the previous month across all states and territories, with the exceptions of Tassie, where there was a 23% increase in installations from August to September; and the NT, where there was an 85% jump in installs, month-on-month.

The Northern Territory blip could be partially explained by the launch of the Territory’s first home solar and battery-based virtual power plant.

As One Step Off The Grid reported here, the Solar Connect VPP was officially launched in Alice Springs in the first week of October, consisting of around 50 participants.

The bigger, the better

Green Energy Markets’ data for September also shows that residential rooftop solar system sizes are getting bigger, with state and territory averages ranging from between 7.3kW in Western Australia up to 11.2 in the NT.

The ACT and Queensland are both sitting at an average system size of more than 9kW for the month, while New South Wales – still by far the leading state for installed capacity for the year-to-date – is sitting just below at 8.9kW.

The commercial rooftop PV markets were strongest in September in Queensland, NSW and Victoria, as you can see in the table below.

Notable recovery

“This month and last month’s numbers are closer to those of the boom period of 2020 and 2021, which marks a notable recovery from the prior months of 2022 where numbers were substantially down on 2020 and 2021 levels,” says Green Energy Markets director of analysis and advisory, Tristan Edis.

“While it is early days, this recovery may reflect the lagged response of consumers to the spike in wholesale power prices, market suspension and associated blanket media coverage that occurred in late May and June,” Edis said.

Despite this consumer drive, the total capacity of rooftop solar installed for the year to date still lags almost 20 per cent behind 2021 levels at the same time last year, at a total of 1,944MW.