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This question highlights for me one of the things that seems very foreign about NSW compared with the ACT. NSW has this requirement to post EC meeting agendas and minutes on a notice board but the ACT does not. As an EC member I am very glad that we (in the ACT) don’t have to do that. It gives us considerable freedom to discuss matters frankly and openly within the EC without (or at least before) matters getting to be a wider bun fight. Every OC will at times have people who get bees in their bonnets about something. If it is some dispute between neighbours it might be far better addressed quietly and discretely rather than broadcast before EC members have even had a chance to talk to the parties to work out what it is about. We tend to include a general overview of the matters the EC has dealt with in a newsletter but we present these as just a selection of news items; we can be a bit more discrete and leave out certain specifics (such as the particular unit) if it not something that people really need to know. We don’t pretend it is a transcript of the minutes but of course we do have proper minutes which anyone could get if they went to the managing agent’s office to inspect the books.
I can think of a few owners who would have loved to have their unpleasant innuendo-laden correspondence to the EC published for them.
In addition to the DA requirements, the unit plan might be a problem. In our unit plan the garages, for those who have them, are on unit subsidiaries, not the unit area. That is, they are an extra bit of title linked to the main unit area. The terms of the lease (ACT is all leasehold) stipulate that each unit on the unit plan is for one dwelling and the subsidiaries are not be ‘dwelling places’. Perhaps that means they can’t be used to build another entire self-contained flat, or perhaps that means they can’t be another bedroom. I am not sure which.
Having said that, our set of town houses has one unit that has an approved extension that linked the unit to the garage and put a room that could be a bedroom into what had been the roof space of the garage. Another had a unique attached garage already and converted that to a bedroom and extra bathroom, also approved as far as I know.
There is a proposal to allow air conditioning units but only to those who are at the ends of the block as there is an alcove they can hide the base units in. This would obviously need a new by-law to be drafted. I am led to believe that any new body corporate rules/by-laws cannot unfairly discriminate against a lot owner. So the question is, given the other lot owners (not being at the end of the block) are being discriminated against, is this actually viable ?
I’m not sure this would be discriminatory. Ideally, one would try to be as equitable as possible. However, what should you do if it would be unobtrusive and practical for the end units to have airconditioners but problematic elsewhere for some reason? If it were undesirable for some reason in most locations but a few, by chance, are situated so that they could have airconditioners without causing any nuisance to anyone else, why deny them the option?
Put another way, a by-law might simply permit airconditioners in these particular locations while being silent on any other option. That would allow an EC to give an automatic approval to end units. Proposals for installations elsewhere might not be out of the question but would require further consideration and a separate decision.
@Kangaroo said:
PeterC, how big is your scheme that used to consume 6MWH/qtr? Sounds very big.I replied saying I had that wrong but just checked and I was right the first time and have edited my post below: We were ~26MWh/year before 2008, then 13MWh/yr with more efficient globes since 2008, now approx. zero MWh/year with production to match consumption.
…When the 60c gross feed in tariff expires at the end of 2016 will everyone who has that arrangement have to reconfigure their two meters back to one “net” meter or do the power companies intend to achieve this with software?…
As I am in the ACT I am not 100% sure of the NSW situation. However, I would not expect meters to be swapped back to the old spinning disk sort that would run backwards or forwards and would automatically do net metering. With those meters you could consume 3KWh of an evening and the next day you might wind the meter back to where it was with 3KWh production in the day. Now, or in 2016, I would expect net metering to be done in software. However, I don’t think any guarantees have been given through legislation that this will always be how it is done. On the other hand, with solar panels on a million roofs around the country, there might be enough critical mass to make it a politically ‘courageous’ decision not to ensure net metering as people expect it to be.
Now in the ACT I think people still get a single electronic, not mechanical, meter that has multiple registers. ACTEWAGL, our electricity retailer, will pay gross for the separately metered production at either the day time rate if the customer is on the time of use metering plan or at the flat rate if they are on that plan. Here it is optional to sign up for flat rate or TOU metering. The day time ‘shoulder’ rate is almost the same as the flat rate in any case. So, here someone installing today would get 18-19c/kWh regardless of their consumption amount or pattern.
If I were installing a PV system now and still had a spinning disk meter I would try to have the PV system installed ‘behind the meter’ to automatically get net IE the flat retail rate. IE My [consumption minus production] would be indistinguishable from just less consumption.
…Otherwise, if somebody is supplying 3 KWh in the daytime (at 6c) and consuming 3KWh at night (at 25c) , they would still face a fairly hefty bill.
Yes, there could be some interesting interactions between PV production and people’s consumption habits and ‘smart’ metering that allows for different consumption tariffs at different fixed times of the day or even dynamically as demand varies on the grid.
There are interesting products that combine a PV inverter with a modest amount of battery storage and a power router. These can be programmed to avoid sending any excess power to the grid during the day so that energy instead goes to batteries that are then used during the evening to minimise import from the grid during the expensive peak period. With such a set up you avoid export for which a low rate is paid and avoid import when you would have to pay a high rate. Consequently the PV system savings to you can approach the evening peak retail price. This sort of product can be much cheaper than the sort of system that allows for complete off-grid independence such as one might have on a farm because it does not have to have enough storage to cope with your highest power requirements or to reliably supply 100% of your usage.
One possibility is that by 2016 such systems, which can be bought now, are more readily available and a very attractive option.
Hi PeterC, Not sure whether your most recent comments were for me or for ccbaxter. I was just trying to highlight some of the questions a decent EC would be answering in a thorough proposal…
My comments were for anyone reading really and I was in part just making the more general point for anyone who might be interested that solar PV tends to scale linearly. That is, there are few economies of scale. In discussions people often tend to assume that bigger must be better and cheaper. In the case of solar PV, unlike many other things in life, it doesn’t tend to work that way. (straying a bit off topic a bit here) There are certain diseconomies of scale with large scale solar farms that don’t apply for domestic scale installations that can tend to cancel out the usual benefits of scale. I could write a few pages on this!
I agree that accommodating multiple inverters might be a problem, as might the state of the roof, access and so on.
…Correct me if I’m wrong, but my understanding is that for new installations in NSW there is no longer a “gross” feed in tariff or a “net” feed in tariff, just a feed in tariff. For which the going rate is $0.06 per KWh. Which means that anybody would be crazy to connect up their PV system in a “gross” fashion these days…
As far as I know that is correct for NSW. What you describe is a net tariff. IE you are paid only for net export at that low rate. Let’s say you make 3MWh and your premises use 2MWh. Your net export is 1MWh and you get paid at a low rate for that. On the other hand, let’s say you use 3MWh but only make 2MWh. You would then have to pay your normal retail price for 1MWh. In both examples your bank account would be better off by [2MWh X your retail price] because you don’t have to pay for 2MWh of consumption. That would not be taxable for an individual or an owners corp.
In the first example, there was a further 1MWh exported. The payment for that extra bit would much less than the retail price (the 6c/kWh above) and would be taxable in the case of an owners corp.
If you effectively get the retail price for most of your electricity production then the return on investment is generally quite respectable. This is perhaps a reason why the proposal discussed here focusses on the individual units and multiple systems. Each unit might consume more electricity than the common property. Each small system might produce only (say) half of the typical consumption of a unit. Consequently the financial return would be attractive to each individual owner under a net tariff but not to the OC via its single account for the common property.
…1) The owners seem to be under the impression that they’ll each be getting their own system. That’s 36 inverters and 36 new meters…It would be more efficient for the OC to have one larger system (on the roof that they own) and to use the income to keep levies down. That’s only 1 inverter and 1 new meter.
Inverters are a small part of the overall cost of a system so there is not actually very much economy of scale from fewer, larger inverters. Indeed it can be more efficient to have multiple inverters.
We have 2 inverters in our communal system. If one were to die, half the system would continue to produce power normally while the other is being repaired or replaced. Within each of our inverters are two independent ‘maximum power point trackers’. In effect that means two inverters in each box, so four in all. The benefit of that is that when part of the roof is in shade but part is in full sun, four separate sections can operate independently at the maximum efficiency for their level of illumination.
If there were 36 inverters and the panel arranged in 36 groups, each little group could work at maximum efficiency without influence from a fault or different light conditions elsewhere on the roof.
Still, 36 does sound a bit excessive. I think it could avoid a lot of potential trouble if there were one system on the roof. That one system might be multiple systems electrically but would look like one unified system. Being on the common property and communally owned all owners would derive the same benefit from that common property, lower levies and a shared warm inner glow etc.
…Such things as mould growth, bird poo, wind blown debris and dirty rain can all affect performance. Again, difficult on a 3-storey high pitched roof…
True, the proposal should include something about how they are to be cleaned. Generally, rain will wash them and cleaning is required relatively infrequently but access for cleaning should be factored in.
Does your OC have shared electrical costs (say lighting common areas) that would conveniently match or exceed the likely production? If so, it is easier to be confident about the financial return on a net tariff and you could avoid tax issues outlined below.
Having said all that, If the roof is not being used for anything else, perhaps the OC loses nothing by granting a special privilege to use it to the unit owners that are interested.
Another option is solar hot water. Simple, low tech and perhaps it can be hooked up in series with the existing water heaters and consequently need no boosting arrangements.
The EC chairman has sought legal advice on behalf of the committee, without discussing it first or getting agreement. The amount is not exorbitant, and falls within delegated approval system for complex maintenance (ie under 1000). However, the feeling is legal advice falls outside this. Your thoughts? What options do a) EC members have and b) non members.
I would think EC members could ‘have a quiet word’ with the chair to indicate they are not happy with spending that was not discussed by the EC. There will always be some matters minor enough that EC members could just get on with it (EG. buying some replacement globes for path lights is not something we bother to pass resolutions about (there is an amount for lighting in the budget). Several EC members keep a small stock, replace globes, and send in a receipt for reimbursement). At some point EC members, including the chair, should exercise judgement about when matters are significant enough that they should be formalised by an EC resolution or, more formal still, a resolution of a general meeting. In between might be some things where an email would suffice (EG. “Dear EC, does anyone have a problem with me spending about $XXX from the maintenance budget on some paint and a bit of timber to fix up the YYY?”).
In the ACT at least, up to a point specified in the Act, the EC can spend money on legal advice or even legal action so I expect you would have something similar.
Sometimes an EC might need to spend money on something because it would be irresponsible not to do so, even if not clearly identified in a budget.
It sounds like perhaps this was a borderline matter and the chair could be pulled up on it informally by the EC.
@kiwipaul said:
…To make it legal just have them declare the meeting General Meeting rather than EC meeting.It does sound like what you are having is, in effect, frequent general meetings. In a small enough group that could work and be legal. It seems to me that perhaps all you need is a stronger chair for the meeting to avoid the mayhem and a little discipline to make each of these meetings a properly-called general meeting. Perhaps you should propose that meeting procedure be an agenda item?
…3) But the ATO regards that as non-mutual income, which must be (nominally) allocated out to each lot, and each lot has to report that in their individual income tax returns rather than the OC reporing it in theirs. Does the SM know they’ll have to issue 36 group certificates? Do the 36 owners know they’ll have to include this income? Note, there has been a suggestion that the ATO change this ruling, but who knows if/when that will happen … PeterC, how big is your scheme that used to consume 6MWH/qtr? Sounds very big.
Yes, the ATO regards a gross feed in tariff as non-mutual income because it is not linked to actual consumption (even if it is less than your actual consumption). On the other hand a net tariff may not be regarded that way because you would be using what you make (in effect) and consequently saving money to the extent that you do not have to purchase power-that is not income. These days a PV system can give a reasonable return on investment if used on a net tariff. IE the return is there if benchmarked against the retail price of electricity.
The matter of issuing group certificates etc is correct if the PV system is regarded as part of the common property and the strata legislation says that common property is held by the owners corporation as agent for the individual owners and the income is assessable and non-mutual. However, the ATO ruled in our case that the OC could pass a resolution to hold the PV system as property in trust for the owners. Then the non-mutual income (we get a gross tariff) could be assessed once in the hands of the OC at the 30% corporate rate that OCs typically only have to pay on interest from the bank. Note that was before this was made explicit in the ACT Unit Title (management) Act 2011. It was made clear in the UTMA because I provided our ruling to the Review of the Act. So, I think the same is likely to apply in other states. You could similarly resolve to hold a PV system in trust for the owners, but you should get a private ruling from the ATO to be sure.
Our OC is 105 townhouse units on 11.4Ha. Our electricity consumption is almost entirely for lighting paths and parking areas. Our 6MWh/quarter (yes, correct, ~26MWh/yr actually) reduced to 13MWh/year following systematic replacement of globes with more efficient ones. Our 9.2KW PV system puts as much into the grid by day as we take out at night to run our lights.
Note I am in the ACT so things might not be quite the same. Following is what I would expect:
1) The minutes could record simply the motion, that a poll was demanded, and the result.
2) No, everyone (assuming they are financial etc) whether present in person or by the appointment of a proxy is entitled to vote on any motion put. However, the details of the proxy appointment should say whether the person is appointed to vote on any motion that comes up as they see fit, or just on the notified motions or as directed on a form. On at least one occasion I have voted twice one way and once the other way because I was proxy for people directing me to vote in different ways.
3) I would expect that the numbers would be recorded if a poll vote were demanded but I don’t think it would be required in the ACT.
4) Yes, I would expect every motion put to be recorded, even procedural motions and amendments that are lost.
@Whale said:
…impacts upon strata democracy arising from the malaise of disinterested owners…There are no ‘disinterested’ owners, only uninterested owners.
In the ACT, proxies count towards a quorum of a general meeting but not absentee votes. The key wording was “a quorum made up by people entitled to vote… in relation to not less than half the total number of units…”
An recent tribunal decision interpreted that to mean that the number of units represented in person or by proxy was what counts on the basis of the words I underlined. Of course, NSW wording may be different.
CCBaxter,
By all means, you and others should be informed and understand what is being proposed but the tone of your email comes across to me a possibly a bit too cynical. Perhaps I am being unfair but I am rather sensitive to this having been on the other side of what it seems is being proposed. I would advise you to seriously consider the possibility that what is being proposed is actually reasonable. For those who are comfortable and familiar with the technology it can come as a hard lesson to find that there are some who are actively antagonistic to renewable power and skilled in spreading uncertainty and suspicion among the diverse owners in an owner corp. If you feel you are not getting sufficient information for an informed decision, I would strongly urge you to sit down and talk. Ask questions but listen seriously to the answers too. Perhaps the proponents are simply unaware how far back some people are in understanding.
When we first put a PV proposal our EC debated for quite a while about how to present what was unequivocally a good idea. Some wanted every bit of detail presented; others advised simplifying to avoid causing confusion. Eventually we had heard every crackpot objection and rebutted them so owners certainly were not deprived of details by the end!
We had a period of frankly appalling misinformation distributed by a small minority in opposition, not to mention ridiculous time and money wasting and ultimately unsuccessful applications to our ACT tribunal by this minority of owners. For some time they were a serious worry but once the PV system was up we didn’t hear a peep about it.
The following is my summary of the situation in the ACT:
Following is the brief item accompanying a graph from our newsletter of a few weeks ago:
“We have just had our first electricity bill for a complete quarter since our solar electric equipment was installed late last year. The graph shows our consumption of electricity for lighting the public areas since 2007. In 2007 we consumed over 6MWh per quarter on average but the effect of installing more efficient globes can be seen by the fall in consumption through 2008 so that in recent years our consumption was halved to about 3MWh/quarter. Our consumption in the most recent quarter ending in Jan 2013 is negative. In other words we put more electricity into the grid than we took out and our last electricity bill was a credit to our bank account rather than a debit.”
Heating a very large pool could be a very substantial expense. I’m not sure that failing to maintain a particular temperature could be called failing to maintain the common property. Not fixing a leak would be. Does the pool have a pool blanket to help retain heat when not in use? Do you have solar heating to help reduce costs? Perhaps those concerned about the maintenance costs would be happy to spend some money if it would lead to long term savings? What about proposing such measures to an AGM and then everyone might have their cake and eat it?
Two separate ratings for lighting are the light intensity (lux) and the colour temperature (cool white, warm white, daylight). The two are not linked. You could have dim cool white or very bright warm lights. It seems that you might have cool white LED lights installed where ‘warm white’ might have been more pleasant.
We have the same issue with some path lighting. Warm white is much nicer but some cool white globes have been installed. It’s not a big problem but when globes die we will try to replace with warm ones.
In this case, perhaps it would be worth buying a couple of warm LED lights to try. Keep the cool ones as spares in case of failures. If people like the warm ones make a point of buying those. Perhaps there is somewhere less sensitive where the cool ones could go till they wear out.