Melbourne solar panels: Compare system prices and installers

Are solar panels still worth the investment in Melbourne? It would seem so: Tens of thousands of Victorian households have installed solar PV systems in the last few years alone, with 10-20% of homes in the Melbourne area now meeting at least part of their energy needs with the sun. This article takes a look at the case for solar power in Melbourne, Victoria.

Interested in solar power for your Melbourne-based business? See our article on Commercial Solar Power in Melbourne.

1. Harness the sun to power your home

Australia is home to some of the best solar energy resources in the world. Although Melbourne is a bit further south than Brisbane or Sydney, there’s still enough sunshine to make panels a worthwhile investment.

According to PVWatts, a typical Melbourne home’s roof receives about 4.8 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of raw sunshine per square meter per day, while the BOM.gov.au website averages work out to about 4.18kWh. Essential, this sunlight is the ‘fuel’ for the system. If a solar PV system could be 100% efficient (which is not physically possible), a 1 kilowatt (kW) solar system in Melbourne would produce between 4.18kWh – 4.8kWh of energy per day, and a 2kW system would produce between 8.36kWh – 9.6kWh per day.

In real life, however, there are efficiency losses that must be taken into account between the time the sun hits your panels and when it exits the system’s inverter. The table below shows rough daily energy output figures for a range of popular solar system sizes if installed on a north-facing roof in the Melbourne area, assuming an efficiency loss of about 25% (to be conservative).

xxx

How solar energy saves you money

When you are grid-connected with no solar system, you have to purchase all of your electricity from an energy retailer. Typically, you will pay at least 21c for every kilowatt-hour that you use.

Having solar panels will allow you to save money by reducing your need to purchase energy from the grid – every unit of solar energy that you ‘self-consume’ in your home is a unit that you do not need to pay for. You can also earn credits (a minimum of 9.9c/kWh, but from 1 July 2019 this minumum will chance to 12c/kWh) for selling your energy into the grid, but you’ll save far more money by focusing on maximising your solar self-consumption.

There are two ways to ensure you’re using as much of your solar energy as possible: 1) Make sure your system is the right size for your home, and 2) Know your electricity consumption pattern and behave accordingly.

We have developed a tool to help you select a solar PV system size based on the amount of energy that you consume and your consumption pattern:

Check out our Solar PV System Sizing Estimator Tool here. 

2. Solar incentives through the federal government

Although Victoria no longer has a state-based feed-in tariff incentive, the federal government’s Renewable Energy Target contains a mechanism that reduces the up-front cost of solar installations under 100kW in capacity.

The actual value of the incentive depends on a number of factors such as location and system size, but usually works out to be about 30% of the total installation cost. This incentive has been crucial in making Australia home to some of the lowest solar PV system prices in the world.

As an example, when this incentive is applied to a 5kW solar system in Melbourne, it results in a reduction of $2,300 to $2,900 off the sticker price.

Read more about incentives available for rooftop solar under the Renewable Energy Target

3. Solar is affordable

Thanks in great part to the RET and the Victorian State scheme, Melbourne is home to some of the lowest PV system installation prices in the world – one of the reasons that there is such a large amount of rooftop solar installed across the state. Solar Choice has been tracking price trends in Australia’s capital cities since 2012 in our monthly Solar PV Price Index. The below tables shows that the cost of solar in Melbourne is very close to the national average.

The chart below tracks average solar system prices in Australia from August 2012 to 2020. Average prices for Melbourne are represented by the light blue line. (Note that all prices are in dollars-per-watt ($/W) format to make it easy to compare pricing across system sizes.)

4. Solar panels offer a great return in Melbourne

Melbourne homes can save hundreds of dollar per year by installing a solar PV system – which, when combined with the low system prices discussed above – translates into payback periods as short as 3-5 years, depending on how much of the solar energy your home manages to use directly. Keep in mind, however, that while lower prices don’t always necessarily mean lower quality, they should be approached with a healthy degree of caution; a solar PV system should continue to produce power for up to 25 years (with inverter replacements every 7-13 years). Any system downtime (due to component failure, for example) will result in extended payback periods – not to mention the costs that may be incurred for repairs/replacements not covered under warranty.

The table below provides an overview of the case for investing in systems of various sizes in the Melbourne area. The table below uses average system prices – keep in mind that lower system prices will deliver more impressive returns. Furthermore, we use generally conservative figures for the example below – including an efficiency rate of 75% and ‘high’ and ‘low’ solar-self consumption scenarios for each system size.

You can play with the numbers yourself using Solar Choice’s Solar System Payback & ROI Estimator tool, which will allow you to adjust variables such as system size and self-consumption ratio.

*(Assuming 75% system efficiency, 25kWh electricity consumption/day, retail electricity @ 21c/kWh, solar feed-in rate @ 11.3c/kWh)

Calculate indicative solar power system returns & payback periods for Melbourne

What about battery storage for Melbourne homes?

One way to increase solar self-consumption is to have a battery storage system installed. Although batteries can still be quite pricey, they are quickly becoming more affordable. Read more about battery storage in Melbourne or check out our analysis: Is home battery storage worth it 2019?

© 2019 Solar Choice Pty Ltd