Australia’s top solar suburbs

Not only does Australia lead the way in rooftop solar, in 14 of its suburbs it’s even as common as home insulation, with solar penetration of up to 65% - is your suburb one of them?

Australia has the highest rate of Solar PV Penetration in the world, with 15% of homes now installed with solar panels – twice as many as the next country, Belgium, at 7.5%.

Also read: Six reasons to invest in solar energy

According to the Climate Council’s recent report, Queensland has the greatest share of solar installations, with 31%, trailed by the more populated states of New South Wales (22%) and Victoria (18%).

However, it’s a slightly different story when we look at the proportion of homes with roof top solar by state.

Queensland (29.6%) and South Australia (28.8%) have the highest penetration of rooftop PV solar by population – fast approaching a third of homes with solar installations, far ahead of Western Australia which is the next closest state at 22.5%.

A few states are lagging behind in rooftop PV solar, but this is generally compensated with other large scale renewable energy generation, such as hydro and wind energy.

Also read: Western Power tops WA asset sales list

Solar PV is much more prevalent in some areas, with 14 suburbs now recording roof top solar penetration of 50% or more.

Angle Vale in South Australia as well as Leinster and Sir Samuel in Western Australia are the front runners with 65% of households going solar, closely followed by The Ponds in New South Wales (64%).

Top 14 solar postcodes - with 50% penetration or more

Interestingly, most of the listed suburbs were recorded as having low-to-medium incomes and are generally located in outer metropolitan and rural areas.

The Climate Council report claims that key factors which encourage high solar penetration include levels of home ownership, building sustainability and energy bills as a proportion of household income.

Also read: Oil prices crash, why haven’t Aussie petrol prices followed?

The Climate Council says it expects Australia will see suburbs with 100% solar penetration in the near future, as solar’s growing popularity has seen it become an expectation in new homes rather than a luxury.

For example, Denman Prospect in Canberra has introduced a requirement of 3kW of solar PV in every house, while new defence houses being constructed in the Northern Territory are being designed to include a 4.5kW solar system and electric vehicle charging points in every house.

Solar installations: Top five suburbs by state

While the earlier mentioned suburbs have the highest penetration of roof top solar, this doesn’t necessarily equate to having the most solar systems installed.

Using data from the Clean Energy Regulator, here are the top 5 Aussie suburbs in each state with the highest number of roof top PV installations.