Solar success: Who’s leading residential, commercial markets?

Yesterday, in our Insights series, we saw where Australia’s solar PV had been installed, and the trends that have emerged. Today we’re going to have a look at the large scale success stories, and overall market share.

The graph above shows companies that self-register STCs who have registered more than two systems exceeding 30kW in 2012, and the associated size and the state of installation. The lower half of the chart shows the same information stacked, where each boxed area represents an individual system in this range.

Now, this is only a subset of the market, as many smaller solar businesses are particularly successful in commercial PV but use an aggregator to register STCs are are thus hidden from view. Still, it is clear to see that there are some businesses having repeated success in commercial PV.

Infinity Solar leads the way with over 1MW of 30kW+ installations, most of which are in Queensland. Todae Solar registered three 100kW systems in NSW, plus a host of others. The graph also speaks of local success – only two companies have installations cross more than two states: Energy Matters and Ingenero; the rest have been concentrated in one state with possible a single installation in a second state.

The competitiveness of the solar industry as a whole is attested to by the limited market share of its leaders. True Value Solar is the clear market leader in most states, and yet only manages to secure 7.4% of national market share. Indeed, five major PV retailers only hold 15% national market share. This is a highly competitive industry! (*To see the market share of top retailers in each state, subscribe to SunWiz’s special mailout here.)

The table below is an extensive list of known PV systems exceeding 40kW in size. This list is not exhaustive, but is the most complete list of large PV systems in Australia. This list is regularly updated and lives on SunWiz’s website. 30MW of systems exceeding 100kW in size are listed.

Keeping track of large-scale systems helps SunWiz advise the government and industry organisations about the growth of commercial PV in Australia, and helps solar businesses make valid marketing claims about where individual systems are ranked. If a system is not listed, please provide details via this website.

This concludes our Insights free mini-series. To access this information (and more) each month, you’ll have to become a subscriber, which costs as little as $275/month (ex GST). Subscribe to Insights Now