ONE in four Queensland households use solar power system  according to figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, but there’s been slow growth in using power generated by the sun nationally.

The proportion of households in Australia with solar panels used for energy and/or hot water has risen slightly from 15 per cent in 2012 to 17 per cent in 2015—16.

The biggest increase in solar uptake over this period was a 7 percentage point increase in Queensland, with one in four homes now having solar systems installed.

From 2001 to 2015, there were 1.5 million small solar panel installations across the country.

The region with the highest take up was Baldivis, a large developing region south of Perth, with 3,511 solar systems.

Homes bought or built in the past decade were more likely to have solar panels than those purchased less recently.

However, less than 10 per cent of first home buyers had solar panels on their dwellings compared with 24 per cent of other home buyers.