Queensland businesses turn to solar to offset soaring bills

The move by businesses in Queensland to adopt rooftop solar appears to be accelerating, with 156 businesses in the south-east corner of the state installing rooftop systems in the past six months.

According to Energex, which operates the distribution network around Brisbane, the Gold Coast and the Sunshine Coast, some 7MW of rooftop solar was installed by those business in recent months. Many have chosen not to export any of the output back to the grid, meaning they are using the entire output to reduce their demand from the grid.

Indeed, both Energex and Ergon are encouraging businesses to do just that, by making it easy for companies to gain approval for solar installations if there are limiters to exports. The distributors argue that it saves extra costs to the grid.

Queensland households are also continuing their rush to rooftop solar, with another 2,000 to 2,500 households adding on systems, which are growing in size. They now average 4.5kW, well ahead of the long term average of 3.7kW. Another 10.5MW was added in December.

In all, some 277,280 homes in south-east Queensland have rooftop solar. That makes a total of 916MW, of which one quarter was installed since the premium tariff was scrapped. Around 195,000 homes still get that tariff, but nearly 80,000 homes do not receive that tariff.