Melbourne Solar Data · system age
Where Victoria's older solar installation cohorts are concentrated.
Explore when recorded solar installation events occurred. This is useful context for upgrade planning, but it does not tell us the exact age, condition or continued existence of the system on any individual property.
System-age snapshot: Victorian 3xxx postcodes
Source data through 31 August 2026. The headline older-cohort figure is deliberately conservative because the source is published here as annual installation cohorts.
Important: an older recorded installation event is not proof that the original system is still present, unchanged, unsafe or due for replacement. CER counts include upgrades as well as new and stand-alone installations.
Recorded installation-age distribution
These are transparent calendar cohorts rather than an opaque score. They show when recorded installation events occurred relative to the source date.
Definitely 10+ year recorded cohort
30.8%Middle recorded cohort
26.6%Recent recorded cohort
42.6%| Cohort | Installation years | Recorded events | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Definitely 10+ year recorded cohort | 2015 or earlier | 279,085 | 30.8% |
| Middle recorded cohort | 2016–2020 | 241,512 | 26.6% |
| Recent recorded cohort | 2021 onward | 386,085 | 42.6% |
Why the 10+ year figure is conservative
At a source date of 31 August 2026, an annual cohort cannot tell us which month within a year every installation occurred. The calculation therefore includes only complete installation years whose latest possible date is already at least ten years old.
For the current source horizon, that means 2015 or earlier. Some events in the following calendar year may also be at least ten years old, but they are intentionally excluded from the headline rather than estimated from an annual total.
Geographic note: this default view sums installed postcodes 3000 to 3999. It is a Victorian postcode aggregate, not an official statutory Victoria-boundary statistic.
Source and methodology
Clean Energy Regulator: Small-scale installation postcode data
Data through 31 August 2026. The System Age Index uses the same annual installation-event series as the Solar Adoption Explorer. It does not infer the age of equipment at individual properties.
Open the original CER dataset ↗
Based on Clean Energy Regulator material licensed under CC BY 4.0. The calculation method and its limitations are explained on the methodology page.