Rooftop solar accounts for 17% of household electricity in Qld

The proportion of residential energy in the south-east corner of Queensland that was generated by rooftop solar has jumped to 17 per cent in November, according to the local grid operator.

Energex, which operates the distribution network around Brisbane, and from the Sunshine Coast down to the Gold Coast, says total PV capacity in its region has now jumped over 900MW – with another 10MW added in November to take the total to 905MW. Ergon, which operates in the rest of the state, has at least 350MW.

The latest data from Energex says that another 2,259 household systems were added to its network in November, and the mind-popping average of 5kW each. Given that exports get little in the way of payment back to the grid, the emphasis for home-owners is for self-consumption.

However, due to the sunny conditions at this time of the year, and limited use of air-con, around 70 per cent of total output from the 275,000 systems in the network is exported back to the grid. As this graph below shows, most systems still get the 44c/kWh feed in tariff, meaning they have no incentive to self-consume, although the numbers are declining as houses are sold or systems are expanded.

Two other little factoids that may be of interest:

There are now 1,500 large systems (greater than 5kW) on the network, with a total capacity of 21.2 MW (an average capacity 14 kW). Another 72 were added in November, at an average of 16.2kW a system.

With 30 per cent of rooftop solar PV in the network now without any network-funded FiT, the ‘average FiT per kWh’ for all energex solar PV  is down to 30c/kWh – the same as tariff 11, one of the major tariffs in the state.