When it's time to upgrade your solar

A decade has passed since Australia's first solar boom, leaving some households wondering what to do next

- TOM WATSON

Take a stroll through almost any neighbourhood and chances are there will be solar panels shining in the sun on at least a few roofs.

T A third of Australian households - roughly 3.2 million - now have their own solar system, according to research by Roy Morgan late last year. And the rate of adoption has boomed in recent years, with ownership rates jumping from 14% in 2018 to over 32% in 2022.

This recent solar rush is by no means the first, though. As Vanika Sharma, a lecturer in power engineering from the University of South Australia, explains, government incentives and generous feed-in tariffs offered at the start of the previous decade kicked off the first wave of installations.

"The very first instance of residential solar in Australia was in the 1980s, but that was a unique case. Uptake really started from around 2001 to 2010, although it was very slow to start off, so the extremely rapid growth actually took place from 2010 to 2013." There have been some considerable changes in technology over the past decade, the first of which is the increased efficiency of solar cells and the amount of sunlight they can convert into electricity.

"At the very beginning, efficiency could be around 10% to 15%," says Sharma. "Then with time, efficiency has improved, so the panels that are available at the moment tend to be more than 20% efficient with a maximum of around 25% or 26%." Solar systems have also grown in size over the decade. Data from the Australian Energy Council shows that the average size of residential and small businesses solar systems jumped from 2.65kW in January 2012 to 9.54kW in December 2021.

Advantages of upgrading