With a population just above 25 million, Australia now has nearly 1kW of PV installed per person, easily retaining its world leading status.
As of 2021’s end, there were over 3.04 million PV installations in Australia, with a combined capacity of over 25.3GW, the Australian PV Institute noted.
Australia has hit an impressive milestone with 25GW of installed solar. That’s more solar per capita than anywhere else in the world! For information on the Australian solar PV market head to the APVI website for solar PV maps and tools. https://t.co/fAPveSblbL pic.twitter.com/aZ2WZu45c6
— Australian PV Institute (@APVInstitute) February 13, 2022
Australia’s solar market has gone through surging periods of growth since the Commonwealth government’s Renewable Energy Target (RET) scheme commenced on 1 April 2001. Between 2001 and 2010 the solar market’s growth sat around 15%, before a period of far more rapid growth from 2010 to 2013.
Australian PV Institute
After stabilising between 2014 to 2015, the market is trending upwards driven by residential installations. Rooftop solar today plays an important role in Australia’s energy mix, contributing 7.9% to the National Electricity Market (NEM) demand in 2021, up from 6.4% in 2020 and 5.2% in 2019.
Australian PV Institute
According to figures published by the Climate Council in February, renewable energy generation in the NEM increased by almost 20% in 2021, with renewables including large and small-scale solar PV supplying 31.4% of electricity generation last year.
In South Australia, these percentages are far more staggering. In the final days of 2021, the state ran for almost one week on renewable energy. South Australia’s 156 hours stint powered by wind, rooftop solar and utility-scale solar farms, firmed by fractional amounts of gas, was considered record breaking for comparable grids around the world.
Australian PV Institute
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
6 comments
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.