Keep your power bills – we’re going solar

Over 1 million Australian roofs now boast solar panels.

It is a considerable improvement on the 8,000 recorded in 2007 but with our potential for solar generation in the world’s sunniest continent we can do much better, according to a report released this week by the Climate Commission.

The report, entitled The Critical Decade: Australia’s Future – Solar Energy found more than 10 per cent of Australians, or 2.6 million people, use solar power for their homes.

It might have something to do with price. The report found that cost of buying a solar photovoltaic system today is less than a quarter of the price a decade ago. Cost of production of solar panels has declined by a whopping 80 per cent in the last four years.

In fact, for Australian households the price of an average solar photovoltaic system has fallen to the point where solar is now competitive in some areas with daytime retail electricity prices.

It also has a lot to do with Australians not wanting to be getting bigger electricity bills each year, and the findings show that the market is beginning to feel the impact.

Chief Commissioner Tim Flannery told the ABC that the time where the peak load occurs has changed, and there has been a decrease in the overall size of the electricity market

"For every person with solar panels on their roof, that's effectively one less customer for the big utilities”, Flannery said.

The report shows that Queensland has the largest number of solar photovoltaic installations of any state, followed by New South Wales and Victoria.

Australian households in outer metropolitan suburbs with high concentrations of home mortgages have a higher proportion of rooftops with solar photovoltaics than other suburbs.

Possibly one of the best findings in the report is that the rapid uptake of solar photovoltaics has already made a contribution to the downward trend in greenhouse gas emissions from Australia’s electricity generation sector.