Australia has the highest rate of household solar panel installation in the world, according to a new report from the Energy Supply Association of Australia.

"We're clearly leading the world in rooftop solar," said the association's chief executive, Matthew Warren.

"There's literally daylight [coming in] second."

The report found about 15 per cent of Australian homes had solar panels.

"The country that's nearest to us is Belgium with about 7 per cent and most other countries are in low single digits, so we're kind of pioneering the experiment of rooftop solar and the world is watching," Mr Warren said.

Installation rates are highest in South Australia and Queensland, and in some Brisbane and Adelaide suburbs more than half of all homes have solar panels.

Mr Warren attributed that to more generous schemes in those states.

"South Australia has 25 per cent of dwellings, which is the highest in the world, and Brisbane's not far behind with 23 per cent, and then Perth and WA at 18 per cent."

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Listen Duration: 5 minutes 1 second 5 m Listen to Samantha Donovan's report Download 9.2 MB

But the report found lower rates of solar panel installation in affluent suburbs.

"It's very popular with retirees," Mr Warren said.

"It's more popular with mortgage-belt consumers who are probably more price conscious.

"It hasn't been in the trendy inner-city suburbs. There's not much roof space and there are more renters, but it just hasn't appealed to that demographic."

Australia lags with large-scale solar projects

While Australians are taking to small-scale solar projects enthusiastically, the report found large-scale solar projects are less common than in other countries.

"It's one of those peculiarities," Mr Warren said.

"What we're seeing here is an accidental experiment both in the way we deploy policy and what happens.

"So we've seen almost no utility scale in Australia, whereas countries like Germany and the US have predominantly utility scale solar, and that's been because of the way our renewable energy target has been designed.

"So it's tended to bias us towards lowest-cost renewable generation like wind at the expense of slightly higher-cost utility scale like solar."

The association said the comparatively low number of utility solar projects left Australia ranked sixth in the world for total solar installation per capita.