Residential PV

Two outages at coal fired power generators in Victoria last weekend failed to faze the energy market as strong solar uptake ensured wholesale prices actually fell into the negative despite major units going offline at the height of summer.

The EV manufacturer with big solar ambitions has finally leveraged its expertise in power electronics technology and launched a solar inverter.

After a rocky start the Victorian Labor Government’s ambitious Solar Homes program gets the rebate recipe right and celebrates a major milestone in the push to have 50% renewable energy in its grid by 2030.

The Australian Capital Territory’s latest Feed-in Tarrif report found that Canberrans are increasingly contributing to their territory’s 100% renewable energy supply thanks to the increasing uptake of rooftop solar.

One Stop Warehouse Finance has been disciplined by the Clean Energy Regular after it was found responsible for the creation of 49,400 improper small-scale technology certificates between 2017 and 2020.

Australian property developer Stockland has teamed with the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) to launch a research project studying the effects of rooftop solar and associated battery storage on the liveability and affordability of the home.

Soon 2020 will only be a worry to future high-school history students. But when they ask us if anything good at all happened in 2020, remember this review and tell them that solar PV shone in the darkness. Despite the mess of it all, 2020 has been another good year for Australian solar. The industry has demonstrated resilience, and significant progress has been made in the fields of energy storage, green hydrogen and others.

How Australia deals with its solar grid integration, for industry veteran Wilf Johnston, 2021’s most consequential issue. Revamping the way the industry proposes battery storage to Aussie customers and safety are also key areas to watch, he says.

Guarantees and warranties may be thought to deliver peace of mind, but when underperformance on rooftop systems is detected, diagnosing and demonstrating failures is no simple task. pv magazine’s Virtual Insight on Quality event in November tackled this issue from all angles – and what it means for Australia’s burgeoning rooftop segment.

Australia is teetering on the upper limit of solar installation expectations for 2020, but this remarkable growth pattern continuing into next year would defy logic, says Tristan Edis.