Do apartment blocks in Sydney retrofit batteries when installing solar systems? The answer is yes....
With over 360,000 strata buildings in Australia there is guaranteed to be another strata building which is similar to the one you live in today. If you are a strata committee member you often feel that it takes time and effort to get to the right information that you need to make a decision and some of these decisions are costly if the wrong path is taken. When you don't have the luxury of time or the committee consensus required to hire a consultant, "phoning a friend" on the strata committee of your twin building might be just what you need to get that perspective or assurance you are looking for.
In our current electricity system, the demand for electricity changes throughout the year, and fossil fuel power plants adjust their output to keep the system working. The demand often spikes up during summer, when all the air-conditioners are operating. The additional electricity demand from these air-conditioners is usually met by backup power plants. However, these backup plants are only feasible to operate when the market price for electricity generation goes beyond a certain level. This is because they only operate occasionally and they rely on these few hours of peak price events to make as much revenue as possible. The typical price for electricity generation is below $100/MWh, which can be pushed up to a capped price of $15,000/MWh during peak periods. This is more than 100x the average price. As a result, these back up power plants can make millions of dollars in just a few hours to ensure there’s sufficient electricity supply during periods of peak demand in the grid.
Over 2 million rooftops in Australia have solar panels, representing over 22% of residential houses. However, if you are an owner of a townhouse or individual apartment in a low-rise strata scheme you have most likely been locked out of the solar revolution. Less than 0.6% of residential strata buildings in Australia have solar panels today.
We are all busy stocking up, reading news and battening down the hatches, so this will be short.
Over the past 5 years, there has been a significant change in technology with "smarter" devices now being installed into apartment blocks. More equipment is using sensors, connecting to the internet and providing real-time monitoring information back to strata committees to help them better manage their buildings. In this point of view, 10 of these "smart building" technologies are examined.
There are rules about the lighting for carpark exits in strata buildings. Many apartment blocks are NOT compliant from a safety perspective and paying far too often to fix roller doors and gates which are hit by exiting vehicles.
Over the past 11 years there have been a number of residential apartment blocks which have taken the sustainability retrofit challenge seriously....really seriously.
Wattblock assisted North Sydney Council with their Futureproofing Apartments program which engaged 40 residential strata schemes on renewable energy, energy efficiency and NABERS for Apartment Buildings ratings in a 4 month period.
21.6% of residential houses in Australia now have solar panels but residential strata schemes housing 2.2m Australians have not yet joined the solar revolution. This whitepaper is designed to assist non-technical strata committee members navigate the renewable energy journey.
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February 2025
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