How stratas are derailing unit owners’ bid to lower bills
Lazy neighbours and strata policies are robbing unit owners of the chance to lower their power bills, experts claim.
Unmotivated owners and strata policies are preventing more apartment blocks from moving to renewable energy.
RenewCo Solar founder and CEO Matthew Summerville has recently installed solar to a block of units in Clovelly and said that unit owners have more options than they realise.
“There’s so much flexibility for apartment blocks and there has been such little investment in this area, it’s a missing part of the whole renewable uptake that we are seeing,” he said.
Mr Summerville said the main thing stopping apartment blocks installing solar is the people that live there.
“It’s easy to fill the roof up with solar and connect to an inverter and wire it to the strata metre giving the whole unit block savings,” he said. “The tricky part is motivated owners.”
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Strata buildings must have 50 per cent of owners vote yes for renewable energy or efficiency implementation, according to the Strata Community Association.
If there is a majority but all voters don’t agree, then a bylaw must be created.
Solar panels can power a shared strata metre for communal electricity which powers communal spaces, lifts and garage doors.
Owners of the Clovelly block opted to power their individual apartments through an Allume SolShare device which allows each unit to be powered individually by solar.
“Ideally you want a minimum of 6 sqm of roof space per unit in order to cover their day time usage. If you have a 100 sqm roof you could power around 18 units,” Mr Summerville said.
“If you had a really tall block then you’re going to have a problem to have enough power to supply everyone comfortably,” he said.
“In that case you could go straight into the strata metre every owner still gets a benefit,” Mr Summerville said.
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Susie Petersan is an owner of one of the five units in the Clovelly block that recently had solar panels and EV charges installed into their apartment building.
“We are all pretty like-minded and wanted to do the right thing,” she said.
Ms Petersan took on the job of researching on behalf of the owners, reaching out to a sustainability consultant, comparing quotes from different companies and finding the best fit for their unit block before presenting the data to the other owners.
“I did the research for everyone to see what we could do and to get the wiring done for the whole block in one hit, which saved us time and money and even if everyone wasn’t ready for an EV yet they could install a charger in the future,”
The Clovelly block had five units, and Ms Petersan said if a block had more units it would be even better and more cost effective for owners.
“The owners corp paid for it and we paid for our own EV charges individually, so all up it was about 40 per cent owners corp and then 60 per cent of our own out of pocket cost,” she said.
With current electricity rates, Mr Summerville said they can expect to get a return on their investment within five years, likely sooner.
The process of installing solar can take between 3-12 months, but Ms Petersan said the “biggest headache” was dealing with energy companies after the installation.
“As unit owners it would be helpful to have the authority to discuss with each energy provider to get a date to get all metres changed over to smart metres at the same time.”
She said some of the units in her block were still waiting to get their smart metres installed and were unable to see how much they were saving, as the energy suppliers claimed they legally couldn’t turn all the metres off for the installation.
“It’s just a waste of people’s resources and time,” she said.
Despite the challenges with the energy providers, Ms Petersan said they have already reaped the benefits of their installation.
“We haven’t had a full bill yet but what I can see at the moment is that our personal bill has already been halved and I’ve spoke to other unit owners and they have noticed the difference too,” she said.
Ms Petersan said each unit owner paid around $7,000 out of pocket and they were able to get a hefty rebate from Randwick City Council.
“If you’ve got an interest in it go and get your quotes in a way that's easy to digest to present to the owners,” she said.
As well as being able to run her electric vehicle and already seeing savings on her bill, Ms Petersan said unit owners should consider how much solar adds value to their property.
“Don’t get stuck on the now, but look to the future, the environmental impact and it will be worth significantly more than what we have paid as unit holders ourselves for when we want to sell,” Ms Petersan said. "If you’re even half interested, I say go for it.”
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Originally published as How stratas are derailing unit owners’ bid to lower bills