Balcony Solar: Will Australia follow Germany's Lead?

This week a third apartment dweller in NSW asked me about balcony solar as they had heard about it happening in Germany. The first apartment building in NSW has now passed a by-law to allow installation of balcony solar systems....

​Balkonkraftwerk is german for “balcony power plant”. 1.5m apartment dwellers in Germany now have a DIY, plug-in, portable solar or solar/battery system hanging off their balcony.
 
In Germany it is AU$700 for a DIY solar system kit which reduces internal apartment electricity costs by 30% with a six year payback. With high electricity costs, it is compelling for both owner occupiers and renters alike to adopt balcony solar. Installing it yourself in 15 minutes means there are no labour costs. If you want a balcony solar + battery system it might set you back AU$2,400.
 
62% of Germany’s population live in apartments, compared with just 15% in Australia but about half the population rents which is similar. The payback on Balcony Solar would be faster in Australia than in Germany, has we have better sunshine and more of it due to our latitude. Australia even beats Spain and Italy as good candidates for balcony solar due to our high levels of sunshine. Australians could expect paybacks under 3 years for balcony solar systems, if we paid the same upfront cost as our European friends.
 
So the million dollar question is. “If balcony solar were permitted in Australia, would the Bunnings weekend warriors install a tsunami of balcony solar across three million strata titled lots?”
 
Let’s have a quick look at who the competitors to balcony solar systems are:
 
1)purchase solar panels in an offsite solar farm called a “solar garden” e.g. Haystacks
2)invest in a community battery which soaks up cheap solar from nearby houses in the middle of the day. Great idea, except none of these are available yet to Australian apartment dwellers.
3)Get the Owners Corporation to install a rooftop solar system and Allume Energy Solshare. You will need sufficient owner occupiers and owner investors voting to outlay the capital for a fixed asset and capital improvement to the block. This has been made more accessible with federal "solar banks" funding and limited grants to strata buildings such as Solar for Apartment Residents (SoAR). Read an article here.
4)Retrofit glass balustrades on balconies with “building integrated photovoltaics (BIPV)”. An example apartment block constructed with this technology in Melbourne is The General which features Onyx Solar Photovoltaic glass.
 
Most Australian apartment buildings have more vertical surface space than horizontal rooftop space. Vertical surfaces don’t produce as much solar power as horizontal ones, but as the cost of solar panels continues to decrease, hanging solar panels vertically is viable. There is already an example of a large strata building in Docklands in Melbourne, installing solar panels for a common area system, vertically on a plant room roof, at Harbour One. Why don’t we all follow suit and hang a small solar system feeding our apartment from our balcony?
 
Australia leads the world in the deployment of rooftop solar with 4m rooftop installations and over 1/3rd of residential houses have solar installed. At present, only 3.5% of strata buildings have rooftop solar and renters in apartment buildings have effectively been locked out of the renewable energy revolution. Balcony solar unlocks the benefits of solar for a segment of the population which was previously denied onsite generation. Solar Citizens have recently written a report that says 500,000 apartment dwellers in high rise apartment buildings are locked out of solar after looking at the problem in Sydney’s Wolli Creek, where 98% of residents live in high rise.
Balcony solar could be the ticket that our rental population, struggling with a cost of living crisis, might go for.
 
A small solar system of 800W can power your fridge on a sunny day. The 800W limit for ‘unregistered’ Balcony Solar systems in Germany is designed to minimise any feed-in back into the grid. This means balcony solar as a segment won’t exacerbate any issues with large amounts of feed-in going into the grid during the sunny part of the day. In 2019, Germany allowed balcony solar to be installed, using a standard plug which plugs into a general power outlet – different from Australia rooftop solar which is ‘hardwired’ into the meter panel. This plug can be an existing outdoor plug on the balcony or an inside plug if you keep your door or window ajar. Germany now has “renter protections” which prevent a landlord from arbitrarily blocking a renter installing a balcony solar system. Balcony solar is also popular in France. Belgium originally had a ban on the “plug-in” DIY balcony solar kits but has now buckled and is joining the balcony solar bandwagon. In Germany, if the system is under 800W (think 2 solar panels) then the system doesn’t need to be certified with the grid provider.  Of course, once a regulatory limit like 800W “grid facing” is introduced, then innovative companies will start building kits which have bigger solar panel systems like 2kW. In these systems the inverter(s) which receive solar from any panels which aren’t in the base 800W solar system will feed straight into a battery on the balcony, filling that up during the day. Then after sundown, a smart battery will start feeding 800W from the battery into the power outlet. This protects the circuit from overloading during the day, but lets those with more balcony space install a larger system and be able to use solar stored up during the day, during peak electricity tariff time windows when people get home from work.
 
There are a few regulatory choke points before balcony solar could be permitted in Australia.  It impacts AS3000 known as “the wiring rules” and the way electrical protection works in the home, as well as thermal limits on wiring. Your existing residual current device/circuit breaker (assuming that you don’t still have ceramic fuses, which a lot of our older stock strata buildings still have!) assumes loads are downstream of the circuit breaker e.g. toaster, fridge, oven, washing machine, dryer, dishwasher, TV etc This is why you typically shouldn't plug generating equipment into existing power outlets. For balcony solar to be safe, you need a circuit breaker which will trip based on electricity flowing both directions through the wire connected to it, not just in one direction. Australian apartments built prior to 2021 would likely not have the right circuit breakers in place.
 
Let’s explore this a bit further. If you have a wire rated for 15amps and a 12 amp air conditioner on that wire, you don’t want an additional 7amps on the same wire from a balcony solar system overloading a 15amp wire for a total of 19amps. The wire would get hot, burn the insulation around the wire and then the wall it runs through.
 
For safety, the European balcony solar systems come with an inverter which detects a frequency inside the power outlet (50hz) and the inverter won’t send solar into the apartment, unless it detects that grid power is coming into the apartment from the grid at the same time. There is a name for this clever innovation called “anti-islanding”. If there is a power outage, the inverter connected to the balcony solar system detects the power outage to the apartment and stops sending power back into the apartment circuits from the balcony solar plant.
 
However, in Denmark they don’t allow balcony solar which plugs into a standard power outlet. You need to hire an electrician to connect balcony solar to a hardwired connection in the apartment sub-board, much like the existing requirement for rooftop solar on standalone houses in Australia. Maybe the Denmark model is a ‘middle ground’ which Australia could follow if plugging a balcony solar system into an existing power outlet is deemed to dangerous? Then we come to Hungary which is the only European country which has banned balcony solar outright. In April 2025, Utah became the first state in the U.S. to approve small, portable plug-in solar systems.
 
The Good of Balcony Solar:
- Lower individual apartment electricity bills by 30%
- Solution for renters who can take their system with them when they move
- Lower the cost of charging electric vehicle if it is on your own apartment meter
- Democratises solar access to those who are locked out and gives people a feeling of self sufficiency
 
The Bad of Balcony Solar:
- visual aspect i.e. will apartment buildings create a style guide so that they all look the same[1]
- danger of panels flying off in wind. Note: they can be quickly uninstalled if a large storm is coming
- danger of electrocution during install by non-electrician resident
- increased fire risk if bad power outlet, wiring or unsuitable breakers in the apartment sub board
- batteries sitting on balconies is a fire risk
 
What would it take for Australia to jump through the regulatory hurdles for a successful balcony solar framework?
 
For Australia, equipment approval would be needed for every balcony solar or balcony solar/battery system which is imported into the country. This is necessary from a safety perspective and a fire risk mitigation perspective.
 
We would likely mandate that a smart meter must be installed first before using balcony solar (unlike Germany which allows balcony solar to feed into the grid through analogue “spinning disc” electricity meters). In Germany, the benefit of allowing the feed-in through the old spinning disc meters is that financially, renters get rewarded for putting electricity into the grid at the same rate as they receive electricity from the grid. This is much more attractive than say a 5c feed-in tariff in Australia for rooftop solar.
 
The flexible lightweight solar panels could be mandated instead of the heavier glass panels to reduce the risk to people below if they were blown off the balcony.
 
Australia would most likely want to have all the balcony solar systems registered with the grid operator, even if they were only 800W. Perhaps each grid operator could provide a downloadable app which allows the apartment owner to register their system during commissioning.
 
We may need the “Power of Choice” regulations to be extended to allow residents to use them inside embedded electrical networks.
 
An insurer might need an electrician to check each balcony solar/battery system once per year, adding additional cost to the annual fire inspection. i.e. "Test and Tag" process. (This process is being setup for an annual check of EV chargepoints so balcony solar could follow the same general process).
 
A renter would have to notify their energy retailer each time they move that they are moving their balcony power plant when they move into their next apartment, as part of the electricity setup process going into the new apartment.
 
Research by the Australian Photovoltaic Institute identified a 3 gigawatt opportunity for rooftop solar on Australian strata buildings, which hasn’t yet been harnessed. Is balcony solar an additional 2.4GW solar opportunity for Australian strata buildings which might beat rooftop solar in terms of scaling up solar deployments for apartment dwellers.

In individual lot owner who is interested in exploring balcony solar can purchase a Balcony Solar "Powering Forward Kit" from Wattblock here.

Brent Clark
Contributor, Strata Energy News

[1] If we look at a gated community of strata buildings such as Sydney’s Breakfast Point, the original architects came up with a style guide for any future rooftop solar system, to match the Hamptons “vibe” of the estate. Panels would have to be ALL black and you would need to install “fake” triangular solar panels to complete geometric patterns which matched the existing rooflines. It was so costly to meet the style guide, that 8 years after completion, that virtually no rooftop solar was installed across the estate. We understand that in 2025, they revisited the guidelines to make it less onerous and try to make the installation of solar possible.