Australia’s rooftop solar boom left apartment residents behind – here’s how to fix it

However that promise was constructed round a selected sort of housing – the indifferent home with a privately managed roof, a personal meter board and a driveway or storage the place the proprietor can set up no matter gear they want.

When you stay in an residence, unit or townhouse, the story is commonly very totally different.

That’s turning into a nationwide drawback.

Rebates alone aren’t sufficient

Flats made up 16 p.c of Australian dwellings within the 2021 Census, and rooftop photo voltaic equipped 14.2 p.c of Australia’s electrical energy within the second half of 2025, in line with the most recent Clear Power Council report.

But apartment-specific photo voltaic packages are solely now beginning to seem. In New South Wales, the federal government says fewer than two p.c of residence buildings at the moment have photo voltaic.

Victoria and NSW have each began to reply. Victoria’s present Photo voltaic for Flats spherical provides rebates of as much as A$2,800 per residence.

NSW’s Photo voltaic for Condo Residents program provides grants of as much as A$150,000 for eligible shared methods.

That’s overdue progress. It suggests residence residents are lastly being handled as a part of the mainstream vitality transition, not an afterthought.

However rebates alone won’t remedy the issue.

The barrier is the constructing, not the panels

Australian analysis on residence photo voltaic and strata photo voltaic and battery initiatives reveals the primary limitations are normally not the panels themselves.

They’re the issues that include shared buildings, together with:

roof entry
strata approvals
common-property guidelines
metering preparations
switchboard upgrades
community constraints and
how advantages are shared throughout residents.

Newer analysis on power-sharing between tenants factors in the identical path.

In a indifferent home, one family could make one resolution. In a multi-owner constructing, the identical resolution can require committee approval, engineering recommendation, retailer coordination and settlement on who pays and who advantages.

Good meters (which may ship knowledge on electrical energy use to your retailer, so that you don’t want guide checks) will assist, and governments are proper to hurry up their rollout. Nationwide guidelines now purpose to ship good meters throughout the Nationwide Electrical energy Market by 2030.

However a sensible meter by itself doesn’t remedy all the issues.

EV charging raises the stakes

That is not solely about electrical energy payments. It’s additionally about transport.

Federal steering says most EV charging occurs at house.

NSW says an estimated 80–90 p.c of EV homeowners will cost the place they stay, together with in residence buildings.

That issues as a result of house charging is normally the most cost effective and most handy option to run an EV, particularly when households can use off-peak energy or rooftop photo voltaic.

For individuals in indifferent homes, the long-term pathway is pretty clear: photo voltaic, a house charger and maybe a family battery.

For individuals in flats with no EV-ready infrastructure, that pathway might not exist in any respect.

Governments are beginning to discover. NSW has funded EV-ready retrofits for residential strata buildings, and Queensland has issued steering for our bodies company coping with EV charging.

But when residence buildings can not assist electrified dwelling, a rising share of Australians will miss out.

Carrot, stick or each?

The reply is each – however utilized in a different way.

For present residence inventory, governments want carrots. Meaning:

co-funding for common-property electrical upgrades
assist for feasibility research
less complicated approvals and
trusted one-stop recommendation for homeowners firms, physique corporates and strata committees.

In lots of buildings, the actual upfront price isn’t the photo voltaic panel. It’s the enabling infrastructure round it.

For brand new residence developments, governments additionally want a stick. It makes little sense to maintain approving buildings that aren’t solar-ready, EV-ready or arrange for contemporary metering and shared vitality providers. Retrofitting later is normally slower, costlier and extra contentious.

And no matter mannequin is used, shopper safety issues.

If residence residents are requested to rely extra on shared methods, additionally they want clearer rights, fairer disclosure and actual recourse when one thing goes flawed.

An fairness concern

Australia shouldn’t let rooftop photo voltaic, batteries and residential EV charging develop into benefits accessible primarily to individuals who personal indifferent homes.

That is partly a local weather concern and partly an engineering concern. However it is usually a cost-of-living concern and, more and more, a housing fairness concern.

NSW’s residence photo voltaic program explicitly says renters ought to have the ability to profit, not simply owner-occupiers.

The Social Housing Power Efficiency Initiative in NSW and Victoria’s Power Effectivity in Social Housing Program present governments are additionally beginning to deal with vitality entry as a equity query, not only a expertise query.

The following part of Australia’s vitality transition isn’t about proving rooftop photo voltaic works. We already comprehend it does.

It’s about deciding whether or not individuals in shared buildings can take part on honest phrases.

If governments get this proper, residence buildings can develop into greater than passive customers of electrical energy. They’ll host shared photo voltaic, smarter demand administration, batteries and EV charging.

If governments get it flawed, many Australians will hold watching the vitality transition from the sidelines.

This text is republished from The Dialog below a Inventive Commons license. Learn the unique article by Saman Gorji, affiliate professor, Renewable Power and Electrical Engineering, Deakin College and Alireza Ganjovi, researcher, Power Programs and Utilized Physics, Deakin College.