One in 5 of all Australian households now using solar

One out of every five Australian households are turning to solar energy for their electricity or hot water, new data has reveled.

The Australian Bureau of Statistic reports that its latest figures show that 19 per cent of households nationally now currently either rooftop solar panels or solar powered hot water systems – up from about 5 per cent back in 2011, when the ABS first started publishing statistics on solar.

Of the 19 per cent, 14 per cent of these households have rooftop PV, according to the ABS’s Karen Connaughton.

“Add in solar hot water heating and we’re up to 19 per cent, so one in five households are now using some form of solar power.”

Unsurprisingly, South Australia scored highest for rooftop solar installations, with a huge 24 per cent of households there tapping electricity from the sun.

Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics
Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics

Queensland is second highest, with 20 per cent rooftop solar penetration, followed by WA with 16 per cent, Victoria with 11 per cent, ACT and NSW both on 10 per cent, Tasmania at seven per cent and NT at six per cent.

solar hot water systemThe ABS statistics also found that almost all households in Australia (99.7 per cent) used mains electricity as a source of energy, while half (50 per cent) used mains gas.

One in five households used LPG/bottled gas (20 per cent), and 14 per cent of households used another source of energy.

The report also notes that three-quarters of Australian households use some form of cooling, with just under half choosing reverse cycle air conditioning and the remainder mostly split between refrigerated air conditioning and evaporative coolers.

“The hot spot for cooling was the Northern Territory,” said Connaughton, “where 97 per cent of households had some form of cooling.” Tasmania had the least, with only about half of all households having air-con.

Comments

9 responses to “One in 5 of all Australian households now using solar”

  1. David Martin Avatar
    David Martin

    If the leaders won’t lead then they better get out of the way of the people.

  2. Chris Drongers Avatar
    Chris Drongers

    Fortunately for the incumbent generators, distributors and retailers, renewables are incapable of contributing more than a dribble of power to households, businesses and the grid.

    Accordingly those centralized electricity model businesses have nothing to fear from this increase in household solar. The centralized businesses can just sit back and laugh at the ignorance of householders wasting their own money on their own generation when the coal mine and boiler down the road can do it more cheaply.

    Oh, wait. Do I see on the APVI site that those pitiful household generators are regularly producing 10% of daytime power in Qld and WA and over 15% in SA? Those households must be kicking themselves at how much money they have wasted.

    1. nakedChimp Avatar
      nakedChimp

      This little bit of ‘dribble’ is already enough to take the cherry off the cream when it comes to peak hour prices and once pv systems come out of FiT they will be upgraded and storage added.. this will happen within the next couple of years.

      You might want to read up on stuff like that a bit more.

        1. nakedChimp Avatar
          nakedChimp

          I read your comment again, flew over the links provided and still don’t get it..
          You might want to put a smiley on future comments like those if you intend them to be ‘ignored’ by idiots like me 😉

    2. Harry Verberne Avatar
      Harry Verberne

      You must be joking! I am saving money with my 3kw solar system. Wait, that is why you are here aren’t you, to try some propaganda on the readers of this site. Won’t work, we are smarter than that.

      The very fact that you are spouting unsupported nonsense like this is strong evidence that the fossil fuel generators ARE worried by the threat to their once lucrative business model.

    3. john Avatar
      john

      Chris
      just have a look at the household situation

    4. john Avatar
      john

      Perhaps you should look at my last post it really sets out how the industry is going.

  3. john Avatar
    john

    Everyone just look at this situation
    The distributors of electricity realise that the best way to kill PV is to change the method of charging you for power instead of KwH use KvA.
    This means a logger will be put on the box to measure the maximum usage of power and you will be charged by your demand not your use of power.
    Brilliant this will only drive people to get Flow Batteries so fast it is not funny.
    What do I mean?
    If your demand peak is say 25 KvA then then you will charged that amount or mind the actual charge for kwh will be about 10c a kwh so looks good.
    This as I said before will just kill the distributers business plan.
    My suggestion to the distributors is get into to supplying storage as soon as you can because you will loose any connect fairly quickly.

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