SunWiz

New data from market firm SunWiz shows Australian households and businesses installed a further 262 MW of solar on their rooftops during the month of April, pushing the year-to-date total up 7% on the corresponding time last year.

Combined rooftop solar capacity is now the second largest source of renewable electricity generation in Australia with new analysis showing that PV systems mounted atop the nation’s buildings provided more than 10% of the country’s power supply in 2023.

Australia’s energy sector is undergoing a notable shift with new data from market analyst Sunwiz showing a record surge in utility-scale battery energy storage projects over 10 MWh in 2023 while residential and commercial installations also reached new highs.

A slowdown in large-scale solar farm development has not been enough to derail near record annual growth in Australia’s solar market with data from SunWiz showing 4.6 GW of PV capacity was installed across the country in 2023.

Solar panel and system prices are on the decline but figures provided by energy industry analyst SunWiz show that an increasing number of Australian households are opting to forgo savings in search of increased generation capacity.

A record 921 MW of PV was installed across Australian rooftops in the final quarter of 2023, taking new rooftop solar capacity to about 3.17 GW for all of last year, second only to the 3.23 GW total rolled out in 2021.

Solar and storage analyst Sunwiz is forecasting 2023 set a new record for small-scale solar in Australia. Despite installations this year lagging Australia’s biggest year to date, 2021, Sunwiz Managing Director, Warwick Johnston, tells pv magazine Australia that multiple signs point to a strong Q4.

Solar payback periods worsened in Australia between 2020 and 2022, but have now turned a corner, data from analyst Sunwiz illustrates. Queensland has seen the most remarkable journey, with payback periods for residential solar and storage falling from 10 to 6.6 years within 12 months.

Australia’s solar market and pricing has been shaken up in recent months with the entrance of Tongwei Solar. Compounding this is the global free fall in panel pricing, which solar analyst Warwick Johnston says is yet to properly hit Australia. “There’s super cheap panels that are coming through and everyone will have to adjust their prices accordingly,” he says.

The figures for large-scale certificates registrations across most of Australia this year are dismal, despite the nation adopting a far brighter policy landscape. “There’s a very large discrepancy between rhetoric and what’s actually occurring,” Sunwiz managing director Warwick Johnston tells pv magazine.