Careful policy design could unlock massive rooftop solar market: report

Customer-sited solar is a major untapped opportunity, which could see 167 million households and 23 million businesses worldwide hosting their own clean power generation by 2050, according to a joint report by research firm BloombergNEF (BNEF) and Schneider Electric.

The report Realizing the Potential of Customer-Sited Solar finds that rapidly falling costs of solar technology have already made it economical for homes and businesses to generate their own power in some markets.

In Australia, for example, the payback period for households investing in solar has been favourable, at less than 10 years, since 2013. As a result, adoption has already taken off, with over 2.5 gigawatts of residential solar added in 2020 alone.

These solar installations can generate economic returns for the hosting homes and businesses, as well as wider benefits in terms of carbon emissions reductions, peak load reductions, and employment opportunities.

“Customer-sited solar is a huge opportunity that’s often completely overlooked. Thanks to falling costs and policy measures, it’s already being rapidly deployed in some markets. Its massive scale up is very likely,” said Vincent Petit, Head of the Schneider Electric TM Sustainability Research Institute, and SVP of Global Strategy Prospective & External Affairs, Schneider Electric. “This is vital for decarbonizing the power sector and offers huge additional consumer benefits. It’s time to embrace this transformation.”