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What the 2023 Annual SunWiz Australian PV Report has to say

PV Market Overview

The 2023 Annual SunWiz Australian PV Report has been released. Here’s what it has to say:

  • 5.3 GW of PV capacity in total was installed in 2022, which lifted total installed capacity in the country by 20%.
  • Residential PV suffered a major fallback in volumes at the start of 2022. The second half of the year saw significant growth.. This dynamic was driven by people shifting attention to recreation away from home improvement projects, until electricity prices made front page news due to the war in Ukraine. Though rooftop PV ended the year strongly, it wasn’t enough to make up for the downturn in the first half of the year, with the rooftop PV segment posting an overall contraction.
  • Solar Farms had a record year for new capacity being brought online. This was particularly driven by three super-large solar farms each exceeding 200MWac in size.
  • The record year for solar farms offset the contraction in rooftop PV, meaning 2022 wound up with the market being practically steady – though the 2% increase in total deployment still enables the industry to claim 2022 as a record year.
  • This brings the all-time tally to 31.4GW, of which 21.7GW is rooftop (19.9GW is sub-100kW)

Residential / STC

The 2023 Annual SunWiz Australian PV Report has been released. Here’s what it has to say about the market for residential solar energy:

  • The residential market was one of the worst performing markets in the country. STC registration fell 14% on the previous year, though residential suffered a 18% decline.
  • This was driven by people shifting attention to recreation away from home improvement projects, until electricity prices made front page news due to the war in Ukraine. 
    • Victoria was particularly hard hit, with a 23% decline in STC registration. By contrast the much smaller ACT market grew by 56%. 
    • Some residential segments fared better than others. The 8-10kW and 10-15kW ranges posted some growth, but not enough to make up for the 25% contraction in 6-8kW volume.
  • The market recovered in the second half of the year, off the back of electricity price rises that regularly made front-page news. It took some time for that to flow through to installation volumes, partly due to all of the rain on the east coast. Installation volumes leaped skywards when the weather cleared, with November and December becoming two of Australia’s five biggest months on record.
  • There was some significant shifting in the ranks for residential PV. Arkana climbed into the top 10 for the first time as did EnergyBuild. Green Energy Technologies also continued its impressive growth story.
  • Though rooftop PV ended the year strongly, it wasn’t enough to make up for the downturn in the first half of the year, with the rooftop PV segment posting an overall contraction. However the momentum built towards the end of the year should carry over into a strong start to 2023.

Commercial 

The 2023 Annual SunWiz Australian PV Report has been released. Here’s what it has to say about the market for commercial solar energy:

  • Like the residential market, the commercial PV market suffered a decline in new installation volume in 2022.
  • The STC commercial market performed better than the residential market, declining by a lesser extent. The exceptions were in the ACT (which has a strong residential incentive program) and SA; Victoria’s commercial STC market did comparatively well to its residential market, but still contracted in volume.
  • The market for systems in the 101-5,000 kW range performed well, posting growth that is expected to come in at 31% making it one of the top performing segments of the market in 2022. However, that wasn’t enough to overcome declines in the 5-10MW segment and in the 15-100kW segment.
     850MW of commercial installations in the 15-10,000 range occurred in 2022, after an adjustment is made for anticipated 2022 installations that will come to light in 2023. This is 9% lower than the 937MW installed in 2021
  • There was some significant shifting in the ranks for commercial PV. Energy Aware and Kuga Electrical’s combination of STC and LGC systems was enough to leapfrog many pure-play residential retailers and rank them in the Top 20 companies overall.
  • The customers buying most large PV systems to date include water corporations, shopping centres, supermarkets, and hardware stores. Universities and airports have also installed plenty of capacity. We anticipate many more will follow in 2023 as corporations figure out how to meet their decarbonisation commitments.

Solar Farm’s best year… before its probable worst

The 2023 Annual SunWiz Australian PV Report has been released. Here’s what it has to say about the market for solar farms:

  • It was Australia’s best year on record for energization of solar farms.
  • The total AC power of PV systems over 10MW in size energized in 2022 was 2.0GW, beating the 1.8GW commissioned in 2018, Australia’s previous record year. 
  • It was a year of solid growth, 65% higher more AC power energized in 2022 than in 2021. 
    • Queensland led the charge with over 1.1 GW. The Port Augusta Renewable Energy Park helped SA be the second-largest state for deployment in 2022. That project, along with the Western Downs Green Power Hub and the Woolooga Solar Farm helped set a record deployment of projects each exceeding 200MW in size.
  • The trend for mega-projects over 200MW in size will continue, with 5 such projects currently under construction. 
  • However, while the overall pipeline of solar farms continues to grow, the amount currently under construction (2.2GW) halved from January 2021 (4.9GW). This means 2023 is likely to be a far leaner year for solar farm completion – quite possibly its worst since the before commencement of solar farm mass rollout in 2018

Other Highlights from The 2023 Annual SunWiz Australian PV Report

Despite contracting in newly installed capacity, the solar industry notched up over 300,000 installations in a year, for the fifth time in history. More than 3.3million households have a solar power system installed on their roof.

The year may have started horribly (with the largest monthly fall on record), but it ended strongly, with two of Australia’s top 5 months on record occurring in 2023 (November & December). Still, the STC market fell by 14%.

A closer look at the most popular system sizes in Australia, grouped by 0.1kW increments. The 6.6kW system remains the most popular; the next most popular is 13.2kW.

The price of a typical Australian solar power system rose in 2022 for the first time in memory. This was due to inflation and supply chain constraints. Now remains a great time to buy solar power.

This chart illustrates the evolving location of solar power stations added in recent years. In 2020 projects were concentrated in the south-eastern corner; in 2021 they spread further but remained close to that nexus. In 2022 there was far less activity in the regions that were popular in previous years, and strong concentration in south-east Queensland.

   

 

How to obtain the 2023 Annual SunWiz Australian PV Report

There’s so much more content inside the full report, which you can obtain here: https://www.sunwiz.com.au/2023-annual-sunwiz-australian-pv-report/