Queensland is living up to its Sunshine State status, leading the nation on solar installations.
New research showed that Queensland had five of Australia’s top 10 locations for solar installs last year.
Solar Run, a solar installation company, used publicly-available data from the Clean Energy Council (CEC) to calculate the total number of solar installations in every Australian suburb between January 2020 and December 2023.
Last year the Melbourne suburb of Tarneit topped the list with 2177 installs, closely followed by Box Hill, in Sydney’s north-west, with 2152.
Bundaberg started the Queensland presence with 1735 installs, with Caloundra (1651), Mackay (1502), Maryborough (1475) and Toowoomba (1442) also featuring in the top 10 for 2023.
The report found Queensland leads the nation in the overall uptake or solar with 54,365 installs since 2020, followed by Victoria 51,104.
The four-year-data set showed 2021 had the highest number of installations across the country, with high installation rates per capita and increased monthly and seasonal installations.
“The trend suggests a peak in 2021 followed by a drop in 2022, and a recovery in 2023, possibly due to the ramifications of COVID-19, the cost-of-living crisis, fluctuations in policy, economic factors, or public interest in renewable energy installations,” the report stated.
