A record year in commercial solar

2016 has been described as a watershed year for commercial and industrial (C&I) solar, drawing record numbers of installations, heavy investment from numerous Tier 1 organisations and even interest from the big banks.

SunWiz Consulting finds that the C&I solar sector finished 2016 with the greatest market penetration in recent history, with 32% of all installations under the Small-scale Renewable Energy Scheme (SRES) being installed in the space — almost a 20% increase from 2015. There was also a record number of 100 kW systems installed nationally, 56 of which were installed in December alone — the previous record was around 34 in a calendar month.

Solar’s strong year in the C&I space can be attributed to a number of factors, including significant reductions in solar module component costs, strong Large-scale Generation Certificate (LGC) market prices, increasing energy prices nationally and improved installation techniques and economies of scale amongst installers resulting in increasingly affordable C&I solar systems. There also was increased comfort and awareness from business owners that solar makes commercial sense as a tool to reduce overheads.

This led to a number of Tier 1 organisations to take up commercial solar pilot programs and even a few large-scale systems — for example, Aegis Aged Care completed the installation of a 3.24 MW rollout, Adelaide Airport added a 1.17 MW system to expand its capacity and St Vincent’s Health moved forward with a 2.7 MW rollout. Mirvac, AstraZeneca, Kmart, Woolworths, Pernod Ricard, AusPost and many more Tier 1s proceeded with solar, as did prominent universities such as CSU, USQ and UTS.

Another shift in the market saw the emergence of more financiers that are geared specifically towards commercial solar. This includes the Big 4, who are now actively looking to fund C&I projects. The atmosphere in the industry is thus upbeat, with 2017 expected to be an even bigger year than the last.