Apartment owners seek cheaper home battery program parity
Ben Potter reports for The Energy:
A rule change that would give three million people who live in apartments in Australia the same access to the wildly popular federal cheaper home batteries subsidy program as people in freestanding homes will be submitted to the federal government this week.
Solar-for-apartments tech company Allume Energy seeks the rule change along with changes to Victorian body corporate voting rules to align with NSW rules that make it easier for apartments to adopt solar panels, batteries, electric vehicle chargers and other "sustainability infrastructure".
It also wants the heavily indebted Victorian government to extend the state’s $2800 per apartment solar panel subsidy to batteries to encourage take-up.
The company raised $10 million for expansion in the UK last year and is seeking another $15 million in the coming months to fund expansion in Europe.
The changes sought here could help make apartments the natural home of “community batteries” — a market electricity distribution networks also want to make their own — Allume founder Cameron Knox said.
Knox says change is needed to prevent a huge gap between freestanding homes and apartments in solar adoption growing even wider with batteries and EV chargers, which are “as hard if not harder” to install in apartments than solar panels.
Thirty-nine per cent of Australia's detached and semi-detached homes have solar panels, compared to just six per cent of apartments and units, according to Energy Consumers Australia. Obstacles include absentee landlords, risk averse body corporates, misaligned incentives, low incomes and technical barriers. Just over a year into the CHBP, seven per cent of detached and semi-detached homes have batteries, but only three per cent of apartments and units.
