Asia Pacific Solar Research Conference 2015

This paper outlines opportunities for, and barriers to, increasing PV deployment on apartmentbuildings in Australia. With PV penetration reaching 40% of residential dwellings in someparts of the country, access to renewable energy for the 14% of Australians who live inapartments has lagged behind. Installation of PV on apartment buildings can help relievenetwork congestion as well as reduce household energy bills, and with multi-unit dwellingsaccounting for 25% of new residential building, the opportunities are significant.Most apartment buildings in Australia operate under strata title which enables individuals orbusinesses to own a section of a property, while sharing ownership of the common property(CP) of the building. Despite some major advantages of this framework compared with otherapproaches, issues around strata organisation have led to a perception that PV on apartmentsis ‘too hard.’ However, new models are emerging, including those from developers and fromcommunity energy organisations, to overcome these barriers to PV deployment.The huge variety amongst existing building stock precludes standardised retrofitting solutionsfor PV, while financial viability of such systems is highly dependent on specific load profilesand network tariffs. PV can potentially be installed to supply electricity to CP, to serveindividual apartments, or as a resource shared between multiple apartments throughembedded networks or virtual net metering. Each approach has particular technical, legal,regulatory and financial issues. The paper explores these issues, and suggests some possiblepaths forward to facilitate the deployment of PV in multi-unit strata-titled buildings