* Australia's Clean Energy Council last week announced figures for the amount of electric power provided to the national electricity grid from household rooftop solar generation!
* Results demonstrate the rapidly increasing role that household rooftop solar is playing in powering Australia!
* There are now more than 3 million of Australia's 11 million households with rooftop solar panels! The large majority of these are houses due to the continuing difficulties of installing rooftop solar on apartment buildings!
* Rooftop solar generation is now providing 14% of Australia's power requirements - 8046 Gigawatt hours! AND THAT IS ONLY COUNTING THE EXCESS ENERGY BEING RETURNED TO THE NATIONAL GRID - IT DOESN'T INCLUDE ENERGY BEING USED ON SITE IN THE HOUSEHOLDS GENERATING THE ENERGY!- which is significantly reducing the amount of power required from the national grid!
* Every Australian mainland state showed significant increases in the number of household fitted with solar panels compared to 2023!
* South Australia still leads with rooftop solar producing 27.6% of the state's power needs; Western Australia is next with 21.4%;
NSW, while a long way behind with 13.1%, was the state with biggest increase from 2022; Queensland- 12.5%; Victoria- 12.2%.
* Purchase of storage batteries has also significantly increased to 1 in every 2 household solar installations.
* With reduced costs of panels and batteries paying-off time for a 7KW system has reduced to a little over 3 years.
* Advice from installers and those with knowledge in the renewable energy industry is clear! - IF YOU'RE CONSIDERING INSTALLING A SOLAR ENERGY SYSTEM do it NOW! PRICES of panels and batteries will not necessarily continue to fall! As demand increases and pressure on supply of products and labour to install increases PRICES MAY RISE! - and government REBATES are likely to fall!
[David Smith, for 'Electrifying Bradfield Inc.]