Whenit’s time to upgrade your solar system

WITH Michelle BALTAZAR

Editor-in-Chief • Money magazine

A third of households –roughly 3.2 million – have a solar system, according to research by Roy Morgan.

And the rate of adoption has boomed in recent years, with ownership rates jumping from 14% in 2018 to over 32% in 2022.

This recent solar rush is by no means the first, though.

As Vanika Sharma, a lecturer in power engineering from the University of South Australia, explains, government incentives and generous feed-in tariffs offered at the start of the previous decade kicked off the first wave of installations.

“Uptake really started from around 2001 to 2010, although it was very slow to start off, so the extremely rapid growth took place from 2010 to 2013,” he says.

There have been big changes in technology over the past decade, including the increased efficiency of solar cells.

“At the very beginning, efficiency could be around 10% to 15%,” says Sharma.

“Then, with time, efficiency has improved, so the panels that are available at the moment tend to be more than 20% efficient with a maximum of around 25% or 26%.”

Solar systems have also grown in size over the decade.

According to the Australian Energy Council, the average size of residential and small business systems jumped from 2.65kW in January 2012 to 9.54kW in December 2021.

Advantages of upgrading

Given these advances, households that installed solar in the early 2010s may be wondering whether they should upgrade.

“If your energy bills are higher than you’d like them to be, that is a sign that you should consider upgrading your solar system,” says Finn Peacock, solar expert and founder of SolarQuotes.

“When I say energy bills, that’s not necessarily just electricity bills – that might also include your gas bill, because you may want to swap out your gas appliances for electric ones.”

Then there are electric cars to take into account.

“Australian houses might use 20kW hours a day, but if you’re buying an electric car with a 65-75kWh battery and you do a reasonable amount of driving, you can quite easily double your household’s electricity usage,” says Peacock.

As well, some older systems may pack it in.

“It’s usually worth getting a good installer out to see if they can fix it, but some of the systems are so bad that they’re beyond help,” says Peacock.

“So, it’s much easier, cheaper and better to just rip the whole thing off and start again.” What costs to consider The cost of a new solar system will vary depending on its size.

“At the moment, people are paying about $1.10 a watt, so that would translate to about $11,000 for a 10 kilowatt system,” says Peacock. Removing an old system might add $500 to $1000 to the cost of the new system.

“I would just say that with an investment in solar or a battery, one of the biggest risks is that if you buy a bad system that fails after a few years, that destroys the economics of it.

“So, don’t go for the cheapest system on the market because it’s very rarely the best option.”