Australia’s remaining solarless roofs harder to crack

On a mission to research solar, battery and electrification upgrades for the apartment block where she lives, Coco Venaglia faced obstacle after obstacle.

The building’s strata committee is open to improvements but they’re pressed for time, and he was pleased when he offered to do the legwork.

But discussions about replacing a small, outdated and likely obsolete rooftop solar panel and installing a battery that would be shared between apartments or power shared infrastructure have been a hard sell.

At a time when benefits are largely flowing to tenants through cheaper bills, landlords appear to have little incentive to invest.

A mechanical “car stacker” lift in the garage of a Melbourne indoor unit block poses a technical challenge for electric vehicle charging, its first-time owner says.

Bids to disconnect his apartment from his natural gas line also range from $1,500 to $4,000 (not including the cost of new appliances); Ms. Venaglia suspects the price tags are overinflated.

These might be reasonable guesses, but he says it’s hard to know because of a “swamp of information” to wade through.

Upgrade options are also difficult to reconcile with his building’s unique infrastructure and technical limitations.

“Lowering the information barrier would be one of the best things,” he told AAP

Finding providers who specialize in apartments, especially whole building renovations, has also been an uphill battle.

Apartment dwellers, renters and low-income households (often the same people) have long been left behind in Australia’s world-leading rooftop solar and now battery boom; This technology is best paired with energy efficiency and electrical appliances to reduce bills and further reduce emissions.

Energy Consumers Australia research suggests that half the country faces zero structural roadblocks to solar and batteries, but the remaining 50 percent are constrained by tenure, housing type or affordability.

Ashley Bradshaw, the group’s managing director of advocacy and analysis, says the rapidly growing success of distributed solar and battery, spurred by rebate schemes, benefits all energy users by lowering network costs, even as homeowners living in detached residences benefit more.

He adds that distributed energy is proving to be a rapid and scalable way to transform the electric grid to meet renewable energy goals and climate targets, especially given that large-scale projects experience headwinds.

Mr Bradshaw says consumer research shows there is still huge opportunity for solar and battery growth, especially if policymakers do more to reduce barriers to disadvantaged groups.

Moves are already being made.

Renters, who make up the roughly one-third of households without solar and batteries, would be able to take advantage of minimum energy efficiency rental standards already in place in some states and under consideration in others.

Groups like Solar Citizens have been vocal about renters’ energy equity, campaigning for homeowner tax incentives to encourage solar installations before the last federal budget.

Regional-scale solution trials are also on the agenda to take advantage of underutilized city roof space.

Urban renewable energy districts will utilize large commercial, industrial and public rooftops to host solar energy supported by battery storage and share the energy with nearby residences, including apartment buildings.

This will reduce dependence on large-scale infrastructure.

Mr Bradshaw said solar and electrification upgrades in apartments were notoriously difficult and the focus should be on phasing out gas connections in new buildings to “stop the problem from getting worse”.

He says limited roof space per dwelling can make the economics of on-site solar installations difficult for existing apartment blocks.

He adds that more cost-effective ways to take advantage of the changing energy ecosystem will differ for each home or building, with ceiling insulation potentially a better investment or advantage to take advantage of. free lunch energy plans.

Wendy Russell, a research fellow at the Center for Energy Systems at the Australian National University, is investigating the electrification of apartment buildings in Canberra.

It says rooftop solar has the potential to significantly reduce the costs of flats while powering energy-intensive shared infrastructure, particularly electric vehicle charging and centralized hot water.

“Hot water is actually a form of energy storage,” he told AAP.

“Especially in the apartment context, because you can use the hot water system to harness excess solar energy throughout the day.”

The study confirms several technical, regulatory and practical barriers to apartment building electrification and on-site generation, including roofs not strong enough to accommodate solar panels and time-constrained strata committees.

In addition to identifying opportunities for regulatory reform, such as improving established networks, he recommends keeping an open mind about emerging technologies such as balcony solar.

Saman Gorji, director of the Smart Power and Energy Research Center at Deakin University, notes that plug-in balcony solar power and batteries are becoming popular in the US and Europe.

But in Australia they face a number of legal, technical and regulatory hurdles.

The energy expert considers state-level rebates for solar installations on flats in NSW and Victoria.

$150,000 for suitable shared systems in NSW and $2800 per flat in Victoria usefully reduces upfront costs in shared buildings.

But Professor Gorji says discounts alone are not enough.

He would like to see standard layer templates that would help construction committees overcome other common problems.

He points to a growing energy equity divide between apartment dwellers and single-family homeowners and says policymakers risk deepening the gap without fine-tuning.

“How can we prevent this energy divide from widening further?” he asks

That’s a question Coco Venaglia doesn’t expect an immediate answer to.

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