Solar Energy The Peoples Choice

Smart investors are joining the "solar energy revolution", a term which Tim Flannery, Chief Commissioner of the Climate Commission coined in an article he wrote for the SBS World News website. This is a revolution, he says, which has gained such a momentum in the last few years that it has exceeded all government expectations.

In a Solar Energy report released by the Climate Commission last week, it was found that now more than 10% of Australians, or approximately 2.6 million people, use solar energy to generate power for their homes. That equates to more than 1 million rooftop solar photovoltaic (PV) systems in Australia, which dwarfs the 8,000 systems tallied back in 2007. In past government predictions, these numbers weren't expected to be reached until 2030 according to Professor Flannery who asserted, "the things that have happened in solar and in Australia weren't anticipated by anyone."

The report also showed that it isn't necessarily the wealthy who are having PV systems installed on their roofs, rather it is the residents of suburbs with a higher mortgage concentration and also people with fixed incomes such as pensioners and retirees. Homeowners continue to invest in rooftop solar systems even despite the removal of government subsidies and rebates. Due to increasingly high demand, governments can no longer afford to distribute these rebates, yet Australians are clearly realising that the future of energy is renewable. The idea of installing a system that can generate energy for the home, day and night also makes solar a popular choice.

Installing a rooftop solar PV system in the home is now more accessible than ever for Australian homeowners, with the cost of installation being less than a quarter of what it was in 2002. Switching to solar energy is no longer just an issue of global responsibility, it's also simply logical in a financial sense. The enormous decline in the cost of production of PV panels, down 80% in the last four years, has been significantly influenced by China, which invested a whopping US31.2 billion into solar energy last year. Given that China is Australia's largest trading partner, the country's investments certainly make a huge impact on the priorities of the Australian government. China's investment also means great opportunities for installers and could potentially provide a lot more long-term jobs for Australians in the PV industry.

This frenzied increase in rooftop solar installations in the last few years has marked Australia as a global pioneer in the renewable energy race, with our sunny country boasting the largest number of individual installations in the world. However, there is still much room for improvement. Australia's total installed solar energy capacity amounted to less than 8% of Germany's solar capacity last year.

With new technological breakthroughs in solar energy being made all the time and the speedy rate at which solar energy is becoming the new energy source of choice amongst Australian households, the Climate Commission predicts that solar energy will be providing one third of Australia's total energy needs by 2050. Professor Flannery envisions a future in which electricity bills are an "ancient memory" and where solar panels will "just be part of your household furniture."