The Australian Government has been working to increase solar energy uptake from as early as 2001 through the Mandatory Renewable Energy Target (MRET) scheme. The MRET has since been merged with the state and territory targets to form RET that currently consists of the Small-scale Renewable Energy Scheme (SRES) and the Large-scale Renewable Energy Target (LRET).
With the SRES in place, solar uptake has seen a marked increase in Australian households. Some of the solar energy facts of the Australian Clean Energy Council’s (CEC’s) annual assessment report of 2011 are as listed below and they paint an encouraging picture: