By David Dodge, GreenEnergyFutures.ca
Twenty-five per cent of homes in Australia have solar on them, but apartment dwellers – not so much – that is until recently.
Enter SolShare a company that started in Melbourne, Australia that has created a solar splitter that allows multiple apartment dwellers to share one solar system.
In the last couple of years, the SolShare technology has helped more than 1,000 apartments in Australia go solar.
This success has inspired SolShare to enter the U.S. and UK markets.
Typically, landlords own the solar systems and then using this new technology they can share the solar with willing tenants.
“So, with the technology, there’s different algorithms. You can allocate everybody with the same amount of solar, or you can do it by percentage,” says Mel Bergsneider of Allume U.S.
For example, you could allocate a larger portion to the common areas of the apartment and then you can even allocate proportional amounts based on the square footage of the units.
“We’re typically seeing 35 to 40 per cent reduction in the utility bill cost to the tenant.
And that’s something that we aim for,” says Bergsneider.
The landlord typically charges an access fee on the rent and then the solar simply reduces the tenant’s electricity bill.
And Bergsneider says landlords are increasingly seeing solar as a marketing solar for their properties.
“Landlords have been able to bake this into their strategy so they can say, ‘Hey, I am renting net-zero apartment buildings, or I am renting sustainable buildings,’” says Bergsneider. “And also, landlords are excited to just to add on more kind of offering or competitive edge to their assets.”
Advantage – Solar-powered Apartments
The solar system could also be owned by a condo association.
Allume sees SolShare as a huge opportunity to integrate solar systems with electric vehicle charging, battery storage or other technologies that can work with this behind-the-meter technology, says Bergsneider.
“It’s an opportunity to create a micro grid, almost to the scale of an apartment complex.”
SolShare is operating in Australia, the U.S. and the UK for now, but Bergsneider says they’re open to overtures from Canada.
“We want to make sure that when we are entering a market, there’s at least a couple of pilots that we’re looking into deploying and there’s a bit more traction. So yeah, it’s an open invitation to make more of the case for entering the Canadian market,” says Bergsneider.
Cooperatives and other community groups in Canada have struggled to make community solar or multifamily solar work, time will tell if technologies like this can help enable solar for multifamily buildings and tenants in Canada.
