Australia’s construction of large scale wind and solar projects might have hit a brick wall in 2025, but the demand for rooftop solar still remains relatively health,y with fewer but bigger systems now being favoured by Australian households and small businesses.
According to a data from the Clean Energy Council, there is now more than 26.8 gigawatts (GW) of rooftop solar capacity across 4.2 million homes and small businesses in Australia – as at June 30.
This is after 1.1 GW was added on 115,584 new rooftop systems in the first half of 2025, down 15 per cent over the first half of 2024, but still ahead of forecasts of a significant topping out in demand.
Rooftop solar is now playing an integral part of the grid, allowing households to become net producers with rooftop PV accounting for 12.8 per cent of all production in the first half of 2025.
More interestingly, it is accounting for much of the electricity demand during daytime hours, and in states like South Australia rooftop solar output has equalled or even exceeded total state electricity demand.
The CEC now expects 37.2 GW of rooftop solar to be installed by June 2030, beating the 36 GW projections in the Australian Energy Market Operator’s Integrated System Plan by 3.3 per cent.
Battery storage is also popular, and will help flatten the so-called “solar duck curve” that makes like difficult for so-called “baseload generators” that still dominate the grid, particularly in heavily coal dependent states like Queensland and NSWW.
Ironically, more rooftop solar was installed in those coal dominated states than any other. Queensland led the way – for the first time according to the CEC – with 326 MW of capacity added in the first six months of 2025 to take its total to 7.2 GW.
The more populous NSW followed with 321 MW and still tops overall rooftop solar capacity with 7.5 GW. Victoria added 230 MW in the first half of the year.
The CEC’s biannual Rooftop Solar and Storage Report does not cover the period from July 1, when the enormously popular federal battery rebate was formally introduced.
In the first half of the year 85,000 battery units were sold, nearly three times the number in the same period in 2024, with a big surge in the second quarter, some in anticipation of being able to qualify for the rebate.
But those numbers will be shattered in the current six month period, with the federal government already reporting that 50,000 batteries had been installed in July, August and the first week of September.
Tristan Edis, from Green Energy Markets, says this is good news. On Friday he wrote that the rapid uptake of battery storage, beyond expectations, will enable more rooftop solar to be installed on the grid without major problems, although Sunwiz reports that rooftop PV numbers in July and August were soft, likely because of the focus on batteries.
Consumer energy resources such as rooftop PV, home batteries and electric vehicles are proving to be the most popular and successful part of the green energy transition, along with utility scale batteries that are enjoying plunging costs and which are now being rapidly sought by the big utilities to help them hedge their bets on the open electricity market.
Con Hristodoulidis, the head of distributed energy at the CEC, says the figures highlight the pivotal role of rooftop solar and batteries in keeping Australia’s energy transition on track.
“Australian consumers and small businesses are delivering the transition at breathtaking speed, turning suburban roofs into one of the biggest power stations in the country,” Hristodoulidis said in a statement.
“Just as Australians have long understood the value of solar in lowering household energy bills, we are now seeing a surge in battery adoption, which allows households to store their own clean energy and maximise savings.
The rollout of large scale wind and solar, however, is moving slower than needed to meet the 82 per cent renewable energy target for 2030, with no new wind projects reaching financial close in the first half of the year, and just a few solar projects and solar battery hybrids.
The problem is being sheeted down to a lack of interest from big energy companies and corporate buyers, delays in planning approvals and transmission builds, and fears that some winners of the federal government’s Capacity Investment Scheme bid too low in the tender and are now struggling to land finance for their projects.
In Queensland, the country’s weakest renewable state with just a 26 per cent share of wind and solar, there is now great uncertainty of the future following the state LNP government’s decision to cancel two previously approved wind projects and “call in” another two projects.
The CEC has joined other groups, energy analysts and consumer advocates in calling for governments to expand the battery rebate schemes tor renters and social housing tenants.
“Nearly a third of all Australian households are renters,” Hristodoulidis says. “To make sure everyone benefits, governments can further expand schemes to incentivise landlords and support social housing tenants, so all Australians can lower their bills.
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Giles Parkinson is founder and editor-in-chief of Renew Economy, and founder and editor of its EV-focused sister site The Driven. He is the co-host of the weekly Energy Insiders Podcast. Giles has been a journalist for more than 40 years and is a former deputy editor of the Australian Financial Review. You can find him on LinkedIn and on Twitter.