“Don’t walk away from the solar industry:” Opportunities ahead for rooftop PV, says analyst

A leading industry expert has appealed to Australian rooftop solar installers, spooked by forecasts of a contracting market and buffeted by global supply-chain headwinds and rising costs, to stay in the business, as new opportunities emerge ahead.

Warwick Johnston, who is managing director of solar market analytics and statistics company SunWiz, said that increasingly gloomy near-term outlooks for the residential and commercial rooftop solar markets in Australia should be “taken with a grain of salt.”

That’s because – as he explained in a webinar hosted by the Smart Energy Council on Thursday – some analysts are still predicting at least some year-on-year growth in the market in 2022, despite a slow start and ongoing tough conditions.

And it’s also because changes in the way households view rooftop solar and storage – less as a way to cut power bills, and more as the preferred source of power for both the home and the electric cars – will mean new opportunities for businesses willing to seek them out.

“Yes, what you’re seeing out there is that the industry isn’t as vibrant as it was,” Johnston told the webinar. “Part of this is due to Covid, but there’s other factors out there … including economic uncertainty and other disasters that are capturing people’s minds.”

Already this year the notorious solar-coaster has claimed two major scalps, with one Australia’s leading solar and battery installers Infinite Energy bowing out of the business, and global giant LG opting out of making panels.

But Johnston said that while a number of market analysts were forecasting a contraction for the rooftop solar market in coming years, others were predicting at least some growth for 2022 on the record installation numbers notched up in 2021.

“So if this is the case, what we’re seeing right now is actually just a momentary pause in what will be some growth; it may not be 30% annual growth rates, but at least it’s going to be a growing market,” he said.

“So that’s nice to know, it kind of says to me, if you’re in business, don’t walk away from the solar industry. There’s opportunities ahead.”

Among those opportunities, Johnston says, are going back to existing residential solar customers to gauge their interest in adding more panels – to power more load, including future electric vehicles – and pushing the increasing advantages of home battery storage.

“It’s… a good opportunity to go back to your existing customers and say, ‘Hey, now’s a good time to upgrade your system or to add storage.”

And the shift to bigger residential rooftop systems – with battery storage – could be applied to new customers, too, Johnston says.

“When you’re selling PV these days, you’re not just selling your 6.6[kW] for today’s needs. You’re also inviting your customers to think, ‘Okay, and we’re going to put an extra 2kW on for your first electric vehicle.

“‘How many vehicles do you think you’ll get in the next four years that are EVs? Ok, well we may as well do that now, we’ll put two electric vehicles on your roof and then come back and put some back-up in.”

On home batteries, Johnston cited analysis that showed, for Victorian households, that by factoring in the state government’s subsidy, and additional perks from some of the state’s new VPP operators, a five-year payback on a battery retrofit could be achieved.

On the commercial solar front, Johnston said that while that market, too, had been tracking behind where it has been at the same time in previous years, SunWiz data was suggesting that was changing.

“That’s particularly because of the Glasgow COP and all these businesses finally realising that they need to do something about this climate [crisis] themselves,” he said.

“They are going and essentially looking at what can I do on my own roofs, as well as what can I contract in terms of offsets, and green energy purchases, or power purchase agreements – so the commercial [sector] is something to target,” he said.