Solar panels in Springwood

As an estimate, a 6.6kW system starts from $7,410, a 10kW system starts from $10,300 and a 13.2kW system starts from $11,250 (with battery prices starting from $4,290), with the STC discount for postcode 2777 already taken off (incl. GST for metro areas; regional areas subject to freight and travel costs). Those are starting estimates for a straightforward install, not a fixed price. On mountain blocks the usual additions are difficult access, a long cable run on a sloping site, and a switchboard upgrade on an older house.

Springwood is in STC Zone 3, rating 1.382. In 2026 a 6.6kW system creates 45 certificates, worth roughly $1,710 off the price, and a 10kW system 69 certificates, roughly $2,622. It is a discount applied at the point of sale, not a grant you apply for afterwards, and it depends on capacity and postcode only.

A properly installed one is a very low risk, but the honest history is worth knowing because it explains why installations look different now. For years Australia was the only country in the world that required a DC isolator on the roof itself. Those switches sat in the weather taking UV, water ingress and daily thermal cycling, and they became the single largest cause of solar-related fires in this country — a safety device that turned into the hazard. The standard was revised and the rooftop isolator requirement was removed, with other measures put in its place.

Not as a blanket requirement. Since the revised installation standard became mandatory on 19 May 2022, a rooftop DC isolator is no longer required where the alternative measures are used instead — a disconnection point at the array using rated connectors, together with load-break disconnection at the inverter or string protection, plus additional requirements covering where cabling runs and what signage is fitted. A new system here will normally be built that way. It is simpler, and it removes the component that was causing the fires.

It is worth having looked at, and it is a cheap thing to check against what it can cost. If your system went on before the change there is very likely a plastic enclosure on your roof containing a switch that is now understood to be a weak point, and it has been sitting in Blue Mountains weather ever since. An accredited installer can inspect its condition, the seals and the enclosure, and tell you whether it needs replacing or whether the system can be reconfigured to current practice. We will do that on systems we did not install.

You switch off the solar supply main switch at your switchboard, and that stops the system feeding the house and the grid. What it does not do — and this is the part worth understanding properly — is make the panels safe. A panel generates whenever daylight falls on it, regardless of what is switched anywhere, so the cabling between the array and the isolation point can remain live. That is not a reason for alarm; it is the reason your system has signage telling anyone who arrives exactly that, and the reason the labels are not decoration.

Three things, all of which are part of a compliant install and none of which cost extra. Signage at the switchboard and at the inverter saying a solar array is present and where it is isolated. An isolation point that is reachable and obvious rather than behind something. And documentation that states what is installed and where it runs. The fourth is yours rather than ours: keep that paperwork somewhere another person could find it, because in the situation where it matters you may not be the one looking.

Rooftop solar on a house does not generally change the planning position, and it is not treated as a reason you cannot have a system. What does get thought about on a bushfire-prone block is the detail of the installation — how the array sits relative to gutters and valleys, that roof penetrations are properly sealed, and that isolation points are where someone can reach them. Our Engadine page goes through that side of it, written for the edge of the national park but the same reasoning applies up here.

The distribution network that owns the poles and wires in your street approves it — not your retailer — and we lodge the application for you. That network also decides how much your system may export: on a flexible export connection, eligible customers can send up to 10kW per phase back to the grid most of the time, while a fixed export limit caps exports at 1.5kW. On a mountain block the other thing worth settling early is the run from the house to any second building, because the distance is the variable here rather than the panels.