New Zealand Solar Power Systems In 2018; Slowly But Surely
By Kristy Hoare on in Solar Power New Zealand
New Zealand's solar power community is on the rise! We've been able to crunch some numbers from The Electricity Authority's (EA) website to give you an overview of what the grid-connected solar power system market looks like in 2018.
Back in August 2013, there were 1,279 solar power systems registered with New Zealand's Electricity Authority. As of September 2018, there are 20,712 solar power systems installed.
In September 2017, 16,591 solar panel systems had been installed; therefore in a year, we have seen almost a 25% increase in the number of installed systems.
Although the numbers are growing, the industry is fairly stagnant. For the last 12 months (Oct '17-Sept '18), there were 3,814 total grid-connected installations, the previous period (Oct '16-Sept '17) saw 3,963 systems installed, giving us a slight drop in the market.
Below is a graph showing the total amount of solar power systems installed in New Zealand, month by month since August 2013.
The Average Solar Power System Size in New Zealand
According to the EA, 4.81kW was the average residential solar power system size installed in September 2018. Compared to September 2017, where the average system size was a 3.4kW system. For years the average system size hovered just above 3kW, but since the start of this year, we have seen average system sizes steadily increase. To the best of my knowledge this is due to an increase of battery storage systems being sold with grid-connected solar power systems. Having battery storage means consumers are able to use more of their solar power, so having a larger size system means the extra power generated isn't going to waste.
Currently, the average commercial system size is 14.3kW.
The Total Capacity Installed (MW)
In terms of total capacity installed as of September 2018 there is 82.25 MW, compared to just 5.4 MW back in August 2013.
Information Source: Electricity Authority Date sourced 29th October 2018