New figures from the Clean Energy Council (CEC) show that 300,375 Australian homes and businesses installed rooftop solar units in 2024, delivering almost 3 GW worth of PV capacity. This includes 159,011 rooftop PV systems with a combined capacity of 1.6 GW that were installed during the last six months of the year.
The CEC said it is the fifth consecutive year that installation figures have surpassed 300,000 units with more than four million rooftop PV systems and a cumulative total capacity of 25.5 GW of rooftop solar now in place across the country.
The CEC’s biannual Rooftop Solar and Storage Report shows rooftop PV contributed 30,178 GWh, or 12.4%, of Australia’s total energy generation for 2024, up from 11.2% in 2023, and almost doubled from 6.5% in 2020.
While the year delivered significant milestones for rooftop solar, the annual installation rate was 10% lower than the previous year when 333,926 units were rolled out while the total installed capacity of almost 3 GW was 7% down on the 3.2 GW installed in 2023.
New South Wales led the way with the highest installed capacity of any state in 2024, at 952 MW. Queensland (800 MW) and Victoria (582 MW) came in second and third place respectively.
The report shows household battery installations increased in 2024 with 74,582 units deployed, up from 46,127 in 2023. The annual total included 45,233 home battery units sold in the second half of last year, up 55% on the same period the year prior.
New South Wales led the way with the most home battery sales in 2024 with 14,686 installations for the year, followed by Victoria (10,996) and Queensland (8,555).
There are now 185,798 home batteries installed across Australia but CEC General Manager of Distributed Energy Con Hristodoulidis said only 28.4% of rooftop solar installation were coupled with a small-scale battery by the end of 2024.
Hristodoulidis said the result indicates the ongoing potential for further uptake and reinforces the importance of establishing a national home battery rebate scheme.
The CEC last year called on the federal government to introduce a Home Battery Saver Program, saying it would be “the missing piece of the [policy] puzzle.”
The clean energy organisation said such a program would significantly reduce annual power energy bills for individual households and businesses while also lowering system-wide costs for all energy users by $190 million by 2030.
“Batteries that are integrated into the grid (also known as orchestration, or virtual power plants) have the added advantage of supplying electricity to the grid when it is needed most, reducing costs for everyone and creating a more resilient energy system,” Hristodoulidis said.
Modelling by the CEC shows a national rebate of up to $6,500 per household could deliver an additional 410,000 small-scale batteries in homes and small businesses by 2050, equating to 2,054 MW of installed capacity from storage across the National Electricity Market (NEM).
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