What a difference a global pandemic makes. Last year, the Victorian state government was forced to increase the number of residential solar rebates put on offer each month, to better meet seemingly limitless demand and avoid putting a cap on the state’s booming market.
Even then, after tripling the number of applications for the month of September, all 6,500 of the rooftop PV rebates put on offer for the first half of that month disappeared inside of one hour.
Fast forward to March 2020 and the uptake of the Solar Homes rebate – which this year offers a slightly reduced discount of up to $1,888 on rooftop solar for Victorian households – has slowed to a relative trickle.
At the time of publishing, a total of 4,928 home solar rebates were still up for grabs out of a total of 5,927 opened for applications in the month of March – nearly 1,000 of which were unsubscribed offers carried over from February.
The change is not entirely unexpected, however. After months and months of record residential and commercial solar growth in Australia, the rooftop market is bracing itself – like so many other industries – for a hit from the unprecedented Covid-19 pandemic.
As Giles Parkinson and Nigel Morris discuss on the latest Solar Insiders podcast this week, demand has been up in some quarters and down in others, but there is a real and growing fear of “a brutal slowdown. Yet another solar-coaster.”
To read the original story on RenewEconomy sister site One Step Off The Grid, click here…
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