Rooftop solar market cools after explosive July, but system sizes rise again

Australia’s rooftop solar market continues its peaky roller coaster ride through 2024, with a total of 277MW newly installed PV capacity registered for the month of August – a 7 per cent dip on last month’s record July of 302MW.

That said, the latest data from industry analyst SunWiz shows that August 2024 is 5 per cent ahead of August 2023, and the month just gone also delivered the second-highest average system size, at 10.9kW.

SunWiz managing director Warwick Johnston says market volumes cooled across all of the Australian states, except for Tasmania, which remained flat. Larger states showed the greatest percentage decrease.

“Sales drivers – lead volume, conversion rate – haven’t yet swung sufficiently to drive sustained growth,” Johnston says.

All segments cooled, as well – except for the 30-50kW range which grew by 1% month-on-month – while
by AGL). The usually popular 75-100kW system size segment charted a 20% decrease in total capacity for the month.

The rapid expansion of average system sizes since March has also cooled over August due to that large percentage decrease in the 75-100kW systems.

Although Johnston notes that the average system size for August 2024 increased to 10.09kW (+0.03kW on July ’24).

All data factored in, the market remains in line with the straight line average, as illustrated in the top chart, above.