The Australian solar market is still showing signs of healthy growth, according to the latest report for Green Energy Markets, with a rising share of commercial based systems, particularly in NSW and South Australia.
The report shows Queensland remains the country’s small-scale solar leader, adding at least 20MW of PV in each of the months of February, March, April and May – mostly on the state’s rooftops.
At an average installation size of 4kW, that’s at least 5,000 new solar systems a month for the Sunshine State. NSW and South Australia, meanwhile, were shown to be installing the most commercial-scale solar.
In May, Australian health supplement and cosmetics maker Homart Pharmaceuticals installed a 100kW rooftop solar PV system at its Rydalmere, NSW, manufacturing facility – a move that is expected to save the company up to $23,000 a year.
As solar consultants Sunwiz noted in their March 2014 report, 17% of installed PV capacity to that time fell into the 10-100kW range.
And despite the end of the South Australian commercial-scale solar feed-in tariff, most of Australia’s commercial capacity was still being installed there.
Western Australia, however, installs bigger PV systems than the rest of the nation, averaging 23kW for any installation that exceeds 10kW in size.
© 2014 Solar Choice Pty Ltd
