The sun is shining bright in Australia, which has just reached 3 million solar PV installations. In fact the majority of PV systems in Australia are residential-based, as one quarter of Australian homes have already installed a solar roof. As of 2021, the country has installed both most PV systems per country and most per capita in the world.
Last year alone, Australia installed 370,000 rooftop PV systems, pushing its rooftop capacity to 13GWp. Moreover, there is no sign of slow down to the trend, as the country is quickly marching towards deploying a solar rooftop on every second building thus doubling the numbers.
Main drivers for the massive adoption of rooftop solar, aside from governmental commitment to renewables, is the fact that Australia is one of the lowest-cost countries for a rooftop installation and the abundance of solar irradiance across the country all year long. Those factors are essentially shifting the economics of rooftop solar towards such a massive adoption.
In South Australia, according to grid operator SA Power Networks the solar output sent the local grid into negative load for four hours in the last weekend of October. However, it expects to see the whole state’s energy needs regularly being supplied 100% from rooftop solar "very soon".
Such a significant scale-up would also require massive digitalization of distributed solar planning, construction processes and O&M management as well as significant regulation easing.
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