One in five households now use solar: ABS

One in five Australian households use solar energy, either solar electricity or solar hot water, with solar electricity nearly tripling to 14% the past three years, according to the latest figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).

"We started publishing statistics on solar electricity in 2011", said Karen Connaughton from the ABS, "and back then the numbers were pretty small - only about 5 per cent of households."

"Jump just three years, to 2014, and there are solar panels being used by 14% of all households.

"Add in solar hot water heating and we're up to 19 per cent, so one in five households are now using some form of solar power."

South Australians lead the solar electricity drive, with 24% of households using it. It was followed by Queensland with 20%, WA with 16%, Victoria with 11%, ACT and NSW both on 10%, Tasmania at 7% and NT at 6%.

In NSW and Victoria, a significantly higher proportion of households outside the capital city used solar electricity compared to households in the capital city, ABS said.

The ABS also found three-quarters of Australian households use some form of cooling, with just under half choosing reverse cycle air conditioning and the remainder mostly split between refrigerated air conditioning and evaporative coolers.

Almost all households in Australia (99.7 per cent) used mains electricity as a source of energy, half (50 per cent) used mains gas, one in five households used solar (20 per cent), one in five used LPG/bottled gas (20 per cent), and 14% use another source of energy.

Hot water systems

The survey collected information on all sources of energy that a household used for hot water systems. Just over half of Australian households used electricity for their hot water system (56%), over one third used mains gas (38%) and 10% of households used solar hot water systems. A household may use more than one source of energy due to more than one hot water system or boosters on solar hot water systems.



The graph below shows the variation between the states and territories in the sources of energy used for hot water systems.

Footnote: (a) More than one source of energy can be reported; (b) Includes the source of energy for the booster of a solar hot water system; (c) Includes 'mains electricity' and 'solar electricity'. Source: Environmental Issues: Energy Use and Conservation, Mar 2014 (cat. no. 4602.0.55.001)

Meanwhile, the majority of Australian households (68%) had some form of insulation in their homes. While 14% of households did not have any insulation, 18% of households did not know whether they had insulation. In Queensland approximately one in five households (21%) did not have insulation.

