Graph of the Day: Rooftop solar passes 4.5GW mark in Australia

Australia’s Clean Energy Regulator has launched a new service that includes monthly updates on the nation’s small-scale renewable energy installation data. Rooftop solar PV has likely passed the 4.5GW mark this month.

As you can see in the chart and tables below, the addition of just under 100,000 new rooftop solar systems, as well as more than 33,000 solar hot water systems have helped contribute to a total of 2,408,971 small-scale renewable energy installations in Australia to date.

That takes the total number of rooftop solar PV homes to more than 1.46 million, and the total installed capacity to 4.478GW at the end of September. At the current run rate, that means that the 4.5GW has likely already been passed in the month of October.

From state to state, Queensland still clearly leads the pack (7,982kW installed small-scale renewable energy), mostly due to its huge numbers of residential solar installations – although the CER data also factors in solar hot water and heat pumps, as well as small-scale wind and hydro power installations.

NSW follows, not too far behind (5,778kW installed), probably boosted by its growing commercial solar market. Then comes WA, Victoria, South Australia, Northern Territory and, finally, Tasmania – although this order differs according to the state-by-state breakdown (in the last table) according to installed rooftop solar systems.

That final table also illustrates what we already know about the Australian rooftop solar PV market, that it is currently in a state of general decline, thanks to policy uncertainty and tariff cut-backs in most states.

Many of the state totals for installed systems for 2015 amount to around half the total from 2014 – in the case of Tasmania, where the rooftop solar tariff has been slashed from 28c/kWh to 8c, to 6.1c over the last two years, the total number of household PV systems installed in 2015 is less than one-third of last year’s total.