As anti-renewables scare campaigns reach fever pitch in the lead-up to the federal election, Australia has quietly passed a major solar milestone, notching up 25GW of installed capacity – more PV per capita than anywhere else in the world.
The stunning achievement, which was notched up over the course of 2021, was marked on Monday by the Australian PV Institute, or APVI. By the beginning of 2022, Australia’s cumulative tally had in fact jumped to 26.9GW.
The milestone caps off a record-breaking year for solar in Australia in 2021, when a total of 5.2GW of PV was installed over the course of the year.
Of this amount, a record of more than 3GW – 3.24GW – was installed on rooftops, by households and businesses, despite a second round of Covid 19 chaos and increasingly strong global solar market headwinds.
At the bigger end of the scale, utility-scale solar notched up its own new record in December, when generation levels surpassed 1,000GWh in a month for the first time to reach a total of 1,263GWh.
Small- and large-scale solar projects combined to meet 13.3 per cent of Australia’s total electricity demand over the course of the year, according to recent Climate Council analysis.
In South Australia in October, the combination of rooftop and large scale solar met all of that state’s demand, and more, during multiple trading intervals over the course of one Saturday.
So where are all these gigawatts of solar installed around Australia? APVI has some great resources on its website breaking down who has installed what, and where, including the above map of PV installations.
You can also find out if you are you living in a leading solar suburb.
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