Rooftop solar charts second-best month, despite Victoria’s Covid plunge

Australian homes and businesses installed another 251MW of rooftop solar in the winter month of August, notching up the second-highest monthly installed capacity for the year to date, according to the latest data from SunWiz.

SunWiz says a slight drop in the capacity installed nationally, down 7.7% on July’s numbers, still has Australia 41% ahead of the same time last year – a percentage that actually increased.

The month’s numbers were buoyed by an increase in commercial capacity installed in the 10-30kW segment. Sunwiz managing director Warwick Johnston says this trend was seen across all major states, but most notably in NSW, QLD and SA.

Other commercial market segments stayed roughly the same, according to the data, except for the >75kW market, which experienced a slight drop.

Capacity installed nationally has seen a decrease in Australia’s traditionally top-performing states – especially Victoria, which is feeling the effects of six weeks of stage 4 Covid-19 restrictions in metropolitan Melbourne.

A separate and fascinating chart (below) from SunWiz shows the impact this shutdown has had on PV installs in Victoria, with installation volumes going from a near-record monthly high, before dropping 22% in one week and a further 24% the following week.

“The volume is still above the same level last year, which points to the incredible growth that’s occurred in the past 12 months. But the fall clearly hasn’t bottomed out yet,” Johnston said.

In other states, Western Australia witnessed slight growth, Queensland and New South Wales experienced slight dips, and the ACT, Northern Territory and Tasmania maintained a steady performance.