Rooftop solar installations have jumped to their highest levels yet in 2025, with the latest monthly data showing a return to form for the small-scale PV market in a year that has seen home batteries well and truly steal the limelight.
Solar market analyst SunWiz says a total of 279 megawatts of new rooftop solar capacity was registered across Australia in November – a 13 per cent jump on October’s numbers and a new high for the year.
Source: SunWiz
The November bounce in installations marks a third consecutive month of growth for the solar market in what has otherwise been a pretty choppy year – the market remains 13 per cent behind 2024 for the year-to-date.
It also shows that there’s plenty of life in Australia’s rooftop solar market yet, despite a shift in focus to storage as households race to add discounted batteries to existing PV systems.
The stunning success of federal Labor’s Cheaper Home Batteries rebate has seen it rocket past a series of milestones since its July 01 launch, the latest being the 100,000 installation mark in October, which was marked by federal energy minister Chris Bowen roughly one month ago.
According to the latest data from the Clean Energy Regulator, more than 124,000 batteries representing 2.7 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of capacity were installed by mid-November and it expects around 175,000 valid batteries to be installed by the end of 2025, or around 3.9 GWh of useable capacity.
“To put this in context,” the CER report says, “this is more capacity than the five biggest utility-sized batteries currently operational in the National Electricity Market (NEM) – and all that capacity installed in just six months,” the CER said.
Meanwhile, in the background, rooftop solar installs have been plugging away. In fact, according to SunWiz, the rooftop solar market has charted three consecutive months of growth for the first time since November 2023 – reversing what has been a downward trend.
Source: SunWiz
SunWiz managing director Warwick Johnston says this suggests momentum is being driven by broad-based growth, “rather than the usual seasonal boost from commercial installations alone.”
It also suggests that the federal government’s Cheaper Home Batteries scheme is not just driving uptake of home storage, but also resulting in upgrades to existing solar systems and the installation of new rooftop PV systems for households going “all in.”
SunWiz says all of the rooftop solar market segments saw growth in November, led by the 30-50 kilowatt (kW) segment reporting a month-on-month jump of 34 per cent and followed by the 20-30 kW and 15-20 kW and 50-75 kW segments, the latter two both charting 19 per cent growth.
Source: SunWiz
Around the country, all states and territories grew, with the exception of the Northern Territory. Queensland charted the largest month-on-month growth of 21 per cent, followed by New South Wales at 17 per cent and South Australia at 16 per cent.
The average system size also made a big recovery in November, jumping back up to just over 10 kW, again suggesting that the wave of early battery rebate PV system upgrades might be shifting to the addition of whole new systems.
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Sophie Vorrath
Sophie is editor of Renew Economy and editor of its sister site, One Step Off The Grid . She is the co-host of the Solar Insiders Podcast. Sophie has been writing about clean energy for more than a decade.
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