Solar, Solar Everywhere: Opportunities and Challenges for Australia´s Rooftop PV Systems

At the end 2014, 16% of Australia´s detached and semidetached houses - nearly 1.4 million homes - had photovoltaic (PV) systems on their roofs. That makes Australia, by a wide margin, the global leader in rooftop PV installation per household. This outcome was achieved from a negligible base at the start of 2010, and such rapid expansion was widely unexpected. This article documents the rise of rooftop PV in Australia. We explain why rooftop PV has grown as quickly as it has and consider the outcomes that this has produced. The currency used in this article is Australian (Au) dollars, which was worth US$.80 at the time of writing.