Green Energy WA Solar Energy News

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Friday 26 April 2013

Where is your state in the solar race?

Solar households now represent almost 1.7 GW of installed capacity says Professor Ray Wills, chief adviser to the Sustainable Energy Association (SEA).
   
The impressive tally, gained from data up until the end of March sourced from the Australian Clean Energy Regulator, shows while solar power system installation rates have slowed a little from 2011 when 860 MW capacity was installed, an additional 600 MW of small scale solar capacity is likely to be added this year.
  
Queensland leads the nation both in terms of installed solar by number of systems and capacity.
   
A breakdown of each state:
  
Queensland: 209,217 systems, 475,136 kW capacity
New South Wales: 194,980 systems, 435,739 kW capacity
Victoria: 128,013 systems, 266,736 kW capacity
South Australia: 107,544, 254,149  kW capacity
Western Australia: 104,653, 218,914 kW capacity
Northern Territory: 1,551 systems, 5,140 kW capacity
Tasmania: 7,881 15,666 kW capacity

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Australia hits the 1 million mark!!


In our latest Green Energy WA news.

Australia has reached one million rooftop solar systems installed on homes and businesses, capping off a massive rise over the past decade of federal and state incentives.

The one million mark was exceeded on March 12, with an analysis of government data by solar industry consultants SunWiz finding 1,011,478 systems had been installed across the country at the end of last month.
The growth in rooftop solar has rapidly increased from fewer than 900 installations in 2006 to more than 300,000 last year.

Clean Energy Council chief executive David Green said about 2½ million Australians now lived in homes with solar panels.

"It is remarkable when you think that just five years ago in 2008 there were only about 20,000 systems installed across the entire country," Mr Green said.
"For some years solar has been most enthusiastically embraced by those in mortgage-belt suburbs, retirement areas and regional parts of the country. People from all walks of life have been installing solar as a way of protecting themselves from power price pain over the long term."

Federal and state governments have reduced or axed incentives for rooftop solar over the past few years, citing the large costs of the schemes and the falling cost of rooftop solar largely due to mass manufacturing in China.
Critics say those incentives for rooftop solar, namely feed-in tariffs, increased the power costs for consumers because a premium was paid for solar power fed back into the electricity grid. Some bodies have also questioned whether subsidising rooftop solar as a way to cut greenhouse gas emissions is efficient and cost effective.
Despite the massive take up of solar photovoltaics (PV), the technology still produces only a small proportion of Australia's electricity needs. Coal is still the dominant supplier of electricity, while hydro and wind are the largest renewable energy sources.

SunWiz data found that over the past year, the 2725 gigawatt hours of power generated by solar PV represented about 1.2 per cent of Australia's electricity needs.

But the rapid take-up of solar panels has been credited with contributing to a recent fall in electricity demand, alongside falls in manufacturing and behaviour changes due to rising power prices.

Of the states, Queensland has the most solar systems installed, at 304,000. NSW follows with 227,663, and then Victoria at 177,851.

SunWiz managing director Warwick Johnston said the cuts to government incentives were expected to reduce the number of solar panel installations over the next four years.
But he said installation rates would remain higher than those in the early part of past decade.

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Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/solar-hits-the-million-mark-despite-cuts-to-incentives-20130404-2h9st.html#ixzz2RXNc2N5w

Tuesday 2 April 2013

Market to reach 31 GWS - Led by China


The photovoltaic market will continue its growth in 2013 albeit a little slower than in the past few years, according to a new NDP Solarbuzz report. The report projected that the PV market will grow about 7 percent this year to 31 gigawatts 29 GWs in 2012. The report also predicted that Germany’s solar market will finally be outpaced by China, which will be the world’s largest PV market in 2013.
“In 2013, we expect to see improvement in the market fundamentals that enable PV demand to return to double-digit growth,” Said Solarbuzz Senior Analyst Michael Barker. “Installed-system prices will continue to fall, and PV will become increasingly cost competitive across regions with high electricity rates, shortages in domestic supply, and growing renewable obligations to fulfill.”
Overall, the top 10 PV regions, which will include the U.S. and Canada, will still account for 83% of global PV demand. But 2013 will start to see a shift to emerging markets from Europe, which had been solar’s largest market. “2013 will represent another transition year, as the PV industry adjusts to softness across legacy European markets,” Barker said. Such a change has been projected in the past but it now looks like it is coming to pass.
Instead ChinaJapan, and India, will account for an increasing amount of PV demand and lead to 11 GWs of PV demand in 2013 thanks to new policies, according to the report. “The Chinese end-market will largely compensate for the downturn in demand from Germany, which previously led PV demand,” Barker said. The shift will also come because of further reductions in Europe’s incentives, which Solarbuzz projected will drive down demand there to 12 GWs, 26 percent less than installed in 2012.
In terms of installation types, Solarbuzz projected that with 45 percent of the market ground-mount arrays will dominate demand for solar in 2013. That’s largely because policies are favoring utility-based deployment. Residential market will remain a leader Japan, Germany, Australia, Italy, and the U.K. In those places, the residential sector of the solar market is expected to remain above 20 of all demand in those countries. The company also projects those countries will account for 75 percent of all residential installations in 2013.
Looking forward, the report projects that Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America, the Middle East and Southeast Asia will make up more of the global demand from 2014 on. While it will consist of less 8 percent of global demand this year, Solarbuzz projected it will double by 2017, driven primarily by South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Israel, and Mexico.
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