Queensland Installs 2GW Rooftop Solar; NSW Becomes Biggest Market for Installations

Queensland broke through the 2-gigawatt mark for rooftop solar installations last month, however, New South Wales overtook it as the biggest market for installations, a first for the rooftop solar installation sector in Australia.
A report on the RenewEconomy website stated that based on data from SunWiz, Queensland added 28.874MW of rooftop solar last month, making its cumulative total to 2.016GW. On the other hand, New South Wales is in the second place in terms of total deployment (1.47GW) but was able to climb the number one spot as the largest market for February with a total of 29.22MW installations.
Warwick Johnston, Director at SunWiz, “Following a best-ever January, (this latest result) means we are off to our fastest ever start to the year.” The report also pointed out, “The surge in installations is being driven by households in the first two months of the year – likely driven by a combination of a jump in process from grid-based power (up around 20 percent) and continuing falls in the price of solar modules (down 10 percent in 12 months). Also, more households are interested in battery storage, although most appear to be holding off installations until they see a further fall in battery prices.”
This is further strengthened by the increase in installations in the 6-10kW size, which signifies that homes are pushing to install as much solar on their roofs as possible as they mulled over battery storage or potentially, electric vehicles.
Majority of the states are experiencing growth of between 50 percent and over 100 percent in the first two months of 2018. But Queensland is the lone state which was not able to post record sales for the initial 2 months. Victoria was able to install 22.5MW, Western Australia installed 15.5MW, South Australia with 14.9MW, while Tasmania, the ACT, and the Northern Territory installed 3.7MW between them.
Read the complete write-up here.