› Flat Chat Strata Forum › Living in strata › Bill shock and solar panels › Current Page
Some questions to consider:
Does your roof and the relative position of each unit’s electricity meter make it feasible to fill the roof with each unit having a portion? Then you could have what looks like one big array but is actually multiple smaller arrays, one per unit.
Alternatively, does the OC have a nice steady load running all day (say corridor or underground parking lights and fans) that could be neatly matched to the output of a larger PV system so that you consume all or most of what you could make through the day?
In either scenario each lot owner gets equitable use and benefit out of the common property, either through reduced personal electricity bills or through reduced levies due to the lower OC electricity bill.
I am not across the NSW legislation but I expect that you would need a special resolution to install for each unit because there would be a by-law making each unit responsible to repair and maintain their bit of PV.
For the communal system feeding the common property electricity circuit, it might be only an ordinary resolution but I don’t know. If you were in the ACT you would do this using s.23 of the Unit Titles (Management) Act 2011.
Also, with or without installing PV, has the OC converted all its lighting to more efficient globes? Even recently constructed buildings can have an obscene quantity of 50W halogen globes, installed at low cost to the developer and high on-going cost to the residents.