1/4 of all Australian homes now have solar panels

Today in Parliament, the  Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction, Angus Taylor announced that Australian now has the highest amount of solar capacity in the world.

Australia is fortunate enough to be bathed in sunlight which provides a great capacity for Australians to collect power from the sun and use it within their homes. Thanks to State Government incentives, the adoption of solar has been a massive success, something they should apply to electric vehicles to have the same effect.

By discounting a once-off cost like solar, home owners can cut their ongoing power bill, quarter after quarter, year after year, for the life of the system (panels are often now come with a 20yr warranty). With a ROI of just a few years, it’s easy to see why the economics of solar make sense for so many Aussies.

For each person in Australia (around 25 million), Taylor says there is now 644 watts of generation. Capacity per capita is one technique to measure solar capacity, but if we look at the raw total MW figures, Australia trailed China, US, Japan, Germany, India and others.

1 in 4 Australian houses, now have solar on their roofs. In the electorate of Curtain, WA, there has been 15,000 solar installations.

Taylor went on to say that thanks to the growth in renewable energy generation, there has been a 9% reduction in the retail price for electricity.

Personally I took the plunge last February and now have almost 12 months of data. During that time, our 6.5kW solar array and 5kW inverter, has collected 8.59MWh of energy. We consumed 4.82MWh of energy in the home, with just 2 months out of 12, where we used more energy than we captured.

When it comes to the environmental cost of not pulling our power from legacy power sources, we have saved 6,368.44kg of CO2 emissions, the equivalent of planting 100.54 trees.

This ultimately means that we basically don’t pay for power anymore and as someone who uses a lot of technology, that’s kind of amazing.

Let us know your solar story in the comments.