Australian households saving $1 billion a year from rooftop solar

Together, the 1.5 million  Australian households and small businesses have invested more than $8 billion of their own money into rooftop solar, and are still investing more than $1.2 billion, despite the removal of most “premium” solar tariffs.

That’s because the systems – although around one fifth of the price of five years ago – are now much larger (an average size of 5kW rather than less than 2kW).

Indeed, as RenewEconomy has reported on many occasions, including here, the investment in solar by Australian households has far outstripped that of the major retailers and other companies in large scale renewables.

There is now more than 4.5GW of rooftop solar in Australia, compared to just 240MW of large scale solar across the country.

“The extraordinary rate of residential solar uptake was never expected to be as rapid – it was certainly not anticipated by governments, regulators or the big power companies,” the report says.

“Still today, many of Australia’s political leaders continue to underestimate our appetite for solar, its continuing fall in costs and the huge associated benefits it brings from job creation to lower bills and energy democratisation.”

This article was originally published on RE sister site One Step Off The Grid. Click here to sign up for the weekly newsletter.