Take a stroll through almost any neighbourhood and chances are there will be solar panels shining in the sun on at least T a few roofs.
A third of Australian households – roughly 3.2 million – now have their own solar system, according to research by Roy Morgan late last year. 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.
“The very first instance of residential solar in Australia was in the 1980s, but that was a
