The Australian Photovoltaics Institute (APVI) has released the PV in Australia report for 2021, which shows that the total installed capacity across all sectors has more than doubled to 26 GW in three years from 11.5 GW in 2018, reaching a rate of over 1 kW of solar per person. With ongoing installations, by mid-2022, at least 27GW had been installed.
The Australian PV market grew in both utility scale and rooftop installs, with a new benchmark of 4.9 GW of new solar registered over the calendar year 2021. This was more than all systems installed to the end of 2014 (4.1 GW).
Additional annual rooftop installs on residential, commercial, and industrial roofs exceeded 3 GW, with 1.7 GW on residential roofs and 1.3 GW on commercial and industrial roofs. New centralised, utility scale solar connections remain stable at around 1.7 GW annual installs, off a high of 2.4 GW in 2019.
Professor Renate Egan, APVI Secretary and co-author of the report notes Australia retains its place in the top ten markets for new solar installs, and total solar installations.
“A remarkable outcome for a country of 25 million people. We’ve seen the number of Australian homes powered by the sun continue to grow. And in 2021 we have seen ongoing growth in the commercial scale solar market – where businesses are increasingly seeing the benefit of the lower cost of power from rooftop solar PV.”
Australia is different to most world markets as it has been dominated by rooftop PV. With 16.5 GW on rooftops, Australia has seen a greater than ten-fold increase over ten years, from a total installed capacity of 1.3 GW in 2011. This demand for rooftop solar PV has kept Australia in the top 10 world markets for photovoltaics by annual installs and total installed capacity for over 10 years, a remarkable outcome for a country of only 26 million people.
At the end of 2021, Australia saw the total number of rooftop installations exceed three million. This means over 33 per cent of freestanding households across the nation are now powered with a PV system.
The states of Queensland and South Australia achieved an average of close to 40 per cent of free-standing homes being powered by solar. A significant number of localities now have densities of rooftop solar over 50 per cent.
PV in the Economy
Solar accounts for 25,370 full time equivalent jobs in Australia. Indirect employment would include jobs related within consultancies, industry associations, government and electricity utilities and would potentially double these numbers. The total value of solar businesses in 2021 in Australia is estimated at over AU$7 billion.
Prof Egan continues, “Australia has a strong solar PV economy, creating jobs and delivering lower energy prices. This has turned out to be a significant asset as we see energy costs escalate where they are reliant on international pricing for coal and gas. The solar and wind resource has zero supply costs, and this doesn’t change as a result of geo-politics.”
Future Prospects
Building off a strong base of installed solar, and with a change in government in mid-2022 leading to stronger and more ambitious commitments to net-zero emissions, Australia is likely to see ongoing growth in the solar PV market. There are well established plans and commitments to invest in adapting the electricity system to meet increasing solar deployment at utility scale, through enhancing transmission, and to manage the significant decentralised generation investment.
The ongoing investment in renewables will present market and engineering challenges that will need to be met by policy and regulatory change including by a redesign of tariffs to incentivise use of low-cost, low-emissions power, by investments in storage and investments in transmission and distribution.
Technology is moving faster than policy and regulation and to maintain the rapid pace of renewable energy deployment, Australia needs to support national electricity market reforms and provide policy certainty to support the needed electricity infrastructure investments and additional electricity transmission, energy storage and demand response mechanisms.
