Australia’s rooftop solar market has had an ominously quiet start to the new year, with the month of January charting a nearly 40 per cent drop in installations compared to December 2021, and a 25% decline compared to the same time a year ago.
According to the latest monthly data from industry analysts SunWiz, the sub-100kW solar PV market for January 2022 is showing a decrease of 38.31% in month-on-month volume, with a total of just 182MW of solar installed by homes and businesses around the country.
SunWiz managing director Warwick Johnston, whose team has also flagged a possible year-on-year contraction for the rooftop solar market in 2022, said that while January was traditionally a quiet time for installations, this year’s lull much was more pronounced.
“The downturn was far greater than in previous years, dropping us back to pre-2020 levels,” Johnston said in the report, noting that every state and territory had experienced a downturn for the month.
The slowdown in installs was also consistent across all segments of the sector, with systems above 30kW halving in volume from December to January and residential systems dropping by 25%.
“The number of system installations for January is the same as the start of 2019, and its lowest level since June 2019,” the report said.
As the chart above (top) shows, the national trend towards lower weekly solar installation volumes was well established, before diverging between October and December, which makes the start to 2022 appear on trend, according to SunWiz.
In other trends, the average system size for January is 8.76kW, which puts it back to levels seen at the end of last year – a dip partly attributable to the conclusion of the end-of-year rush for commercial PV installations.
Within the residential market, SunWiz says the 6-7kW range remains the most popular, although has been trending down over the last 12 months.
All of this said, Australia’s rooftop solar uptake remains remarkably high, having passed the 3 million system milestone in 2021 to deliver another record year of growth and take the country to a total of more than 17GW of installed small-scale PV capacity by the year’s end.
As SunWiz noted in its 2021 Australian Solar Year in Review, “The Wisdom” report, the record volumes over what was a “turbulent” year demonstrate the excellent value proposition that solar continues to offer to households and businesses.
And while SunWiz is cautious in its outlook for 2022, and not ruling out a mild downturn in rooftop solar growth for the year, there is also plenty of cause for optimism.
“PV still remains an excellent investment, particularly during times of economic uncertainty and low interest rates,” the Year in Review report says, as One Step reported here.
“Plenty of the 3 million existing PV systems are small in size; except in recent years, the systems that were installed are insufficiently sized for today’s household requirements,” it notes, adding that larger PV system are increasingly required, particularly when you factor in future uptake of electric vehicles.
Sophie is editor of One Step Off The Grid and editor of its sister site, Renew Economy. Sophie has been writing about clean energy for more than a decade.
