Schools, aged care facilities, shopping centres and bars are among the eclectic mix of establishments installing solar panels, amid predictions commercial rooftop installations could grow by nearly a gigawatt in Perth and surrounds by 2037.
In a recent report for the Australian Energy Market Operator, Jacobs Engineering surmised that rooftop solar installation would continue to grow rapidly in the South West Integrated System electricity network, which spreads from Geraldton in the Mid West south to Esperance.
That growth will be driven by significant growth in the number of businesses using rooftop solar, a take-up expected to rise from less than 100 megawatts installed to more than 900MW, helping boost overall capacity, which includes households, from around 500MW in 2016 to more than 2,500MW.
To put it in perspective, that’s nearly equivalent to the current generation capacity of state-owned utility Synergy.
Clean energy company Perdaman Advanced Energy’ managing director, Dominic Da Cruz, said there was already significant interest from aged care facilities and private schools.
“Almost every large school is in the market at the moment for solar,” Mr Da Cruz [10] told Business News.
“We’ve got a couple of power purchase agreements under our belt with a couple of schools and we’ve sold mainly 100 kilowatt size (system) solutions.
“We’re getting a lot of interest now for 500KW up to 1MW in size installations for the larger schools.”
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