NSW notches up new national record for rooftop solar installations

A record total of 60MW of new rooftop solar capacity was installed in New South Wales in November – a new monthly high for any state in Australia, according to the latest market update from industry statistician SunWiz.

SunWiz says the NSW record, combined with a new high for Queensland – a state record of 56MW installed for the month – helped to counter a dip in installations for South Australia, to keep the national market steady.

All up, Australian homes and businesses added a total of 206MW of new rooftop PV capacity in November – just shy of October’s record level of 207MW.

This keeps the market a steady 36 per cent ahead of the same time next year, and puts it on track to exceed the total 2.1GW registered in 2019, SunWiz managing director Warwick Johnston said.

Victoria, whose state government on Monday released another nearly 3,000 home solar panel rebates, also remained steady, with a total of 41MW installed for the month.

“Does this mean the rebate allocation has washed through or is there more growth to come?” says Johnston.

Certainly, things have settled in the Victorian market, since the government increased the number of rebates released each month, and decided to spread them across two allocations.

According to the Solar Victoria website, on Tuesday morning there were still 152 of the 2,932 rebates allocated on December 02 that remained open to applications.

• Read Nigel Morris on the winners and losers of Victoria’s rooftop solar rebate scheme

According to SunWiz, the residential rooftop solar market remained steady over the course of November, while commercial eased back a little in every category except for 75kW-100kW, which grew.

And growth in the 10-20kW market nationally was echoed in higher volumes of 10-30kW in NSW and Queensland.

In terms of the average size of rooftop PV systems being installed, SunWiz says this has also remained steady at 7.8kW per system.