New figures from Australia’s Energy Regulator says our homes are leading the switch to clean electricity, with big jumps in rooftop solar, batteries and electric vehicles.
Their latest State of The Energy Market report showed that rooftop electricity is now above 20 gigawatts–or a quarter of the maximum electricity which can be produced in the grid—while new wind, solar & storage installations are also expected to triple in the next 12 months compared to 2023-2024.
It’s exciting news. It means Australians are looking for more ways to take power back into their own hands, not only lowering their own costs, but cutting climate pollution too, something the majority of consumers say they’re keen on.
In fact Australia is now one of the top countries to increase renewable electricity generation in the past five years. And by 2030 wind and solar could meet almost all of our electricity needs with energy storage like batteries at home or in the community.
It’s great progress, but we still have a lot of work to do. For a start—as I said in a recent blog—most new homes aren’t being wired to handle renewables, storage or electric cars up front. That is just dumb but at least easily fixed.
Secondly Australia needs to be investing a lot more in Net Zero infrastructure, $2.4 trillion in fact according to Bloomberg’s New Energy Outlook: Australia report. To hit 2050 targets, wind and solar installations need to reach a combined 290 gigawatts by mid-century, while storage must jump from around 3 gigawatts today to over 59 gigawatts.
Homes and consumers can only do so much. For example public spending on power lines—mundane I know but absolutely essential to our future—will need to soar to be able to handle home to grid energy transfers as well as the new sources of electricity from solar & wind farms.
We only need to look at South Australia that went from zero to 100% renewables in just 20 years. That feat was built on a combination of domestic rooftop solar—a lot of it—and the infrastructure to distribute it efficiently.
If tiny South Australia can do it, we all can.
Cheers, John Fennell
