It seems that Australians are very keen to let the sunshine in when it comes to generating electricity and new government figures show that more than three million now live under a solar panel equipped roof.
According to the Clean Energy Regulator (CER) the proportion of Australians with solar panels more than doubled in the past three years, from 7.5 per cent in March 2011 to 16 per cent.
That represented more than three million people by the end of 2013.
South Australia had the highest number of homes with solar, 28 per cent, followed by 22 per cent in Queensland and 18 per cent in Western Australia.
In NSW and Victoria, 11 per cent and 12 per cent respectively had solar power in their homes.
The new figures from the CER debunks the widely circulating myth that solar power is a feel-good hobby for wealthy environmentalists as the growth areas are in middle class suburbs and new developments.
At the same time a new report by Roy Morgan Research shows that home solar is continuing to grow in popularity, despite cuts to incentives such as the feed-in tariff for selling solar-generated electricity back to the grid.
”People have twigged that electricity bills are going to keep going up for some time, and they’ve also worked out that the sun is going to come up tomorrow,” Victoria’s leader of the Australian Greens Party Greg Barber told Fairfax Media.
”They are walking into solar shops with their power bills in their hands saying ‘I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it any more’.”
The Roy Morgan report found that the main driver for people to go solar was a desire to control their household power costs, followed by doing something for the environment.