Queensland continues to lead the charge to rooftop solar in Australia, with households and businesses around the country adding another 75MW of PV capacity in the month of November, taking the total for 2014 to 657MW.
Australia-wide, a total of 170,000 rooftop solar systems have been added this year, maintaining the monthly average of more than 15,000 new homes a month.
On top of this, a total of 54,000 homes have added solar hot water so far this year. Some homes may have doubled up.
Data released by Green Energy Markets shows that Queensland remains the top state for installations, with another 18MW in November and an 11-month total of 222MW, closely followed (on the latest monthly totals) by NSW and Victoria.
The proportion of residential energy in the south-east corner of Queensland that was generated by rooftop solar jumped to 17 per cent in November, according to the local grid operator.
Energex, which operates the distribution network around Brisbane, and from the Sunshine Coast down to the Gold Coast, says total PV capacity in its region has now jumped over 900MW – with another 10MW added in November to take the total to 905MW. Ergon, which operates in the rest of the state, has at least 350MW.
The latest data from Energex says that another 2,259 household systems were added to its network in November, at an average of 5kW each.
Due to the sunny conditions at this time of the year, and limited use of air-con, around 70 per cent of total output from the 275,000 systems in the network is exported back to the grid.
In Large-scale solar, November also included some interesting new projects, including a 325kW system at the Alice Springs Airport car park, a 210kW system on the Mars Chocolate Australia facility in Victoria, and a 198kW facility on the roof of Wodonga rendering in the twin town of Albury-Wodonga.
© 2014 Solar Choice Pty Ltd
