The International Energy Agency (IEA) has published Solar Heat Worldwide annually since 2005 as the most comprehensive summary of the global market for solar heating and cooling technologies.
Exemplary Energy’s David Ferrari has been an active contributor to each edition of the publication since 2012, contributing his analysis of the Australian solar thermal market which – as in many other areas of life – we continue to exceed expectations based on our size.
Our estimates indicate that Australia makes up about 1.4 per cent of solar thermal collectors in operation and about 1.5 per cent of newly installed collector area in 2020.
Two thirds, or 380,000 m2 of Australia’s newly-installed capacity in 2020 was unglazed (mostly pool heaters), while the glazed flat-plate and evacuated tube collectors most often used for domestic water heating made up around 162,000 m2. Passive solar architectural use is excluded from this category but it includes active solar space conditioning systems.
More information can be found in the full report which is available without charge at https://www.iea-shc.org/solar-heat-worldwide