Wattblock End of Year Wrap 2025....

As we head into Christmas and New Year and Chinese New Year celebrations, we take a look back at the year that was and what lies ahead for 2026....

To mark the 20th year since a major study was done by Energy Australia into Sydney apartment building energy efficiency (the first of its kind in Australia!), Wattblock re-examined 25 of the original buildings which were studied by Energy Australia in 2005 here.

Our online "Electrify Strata" whatsapp group has now grown to over 250 strata electrification enthusiasts. Feel free to join here and ask a question of our friendly community or share your own success stories. Similarly, our Electrify Installer Directory has grown to over 339 companies and our free installer directory has had 10,000 views. This shows that there is increasing interest in retrofitting strata buildings for sustainability and electrification. If you are an installer who would like to be added please contact us.

Throughout 2025, Wattblock worked with a number of local councils on strata sustainability including North Sydney, Lane Cove, Mosman, Canada Bay, Woollahra, Waverley, Randwick, Newcastle and City of Sydney. A shout out to North Sydney council for trialling a new live event format called "Strata Social". We turned our 5 minute group discussion stimulus talk from "Strata Social" into a short video on the 4 personalities you need on a strata committee (bean counter, tinkerer, greenie and tech evangelist.) It is also great to see Waverley, Woollahra and Randwick councils teaming up on the Stratasphere program. We also recorded a webinar with Northern Beaches councillor, Joelene Hackman on solar for strata which can be viewed here. Wattblock participated in a workshop with City of Sydney to help focus future sustainability programs for residential strata schemes and was happy to see City of Sydney featuring Wattblock customer Bridgewater on its solar and heat pump journey. We've written a blog on 'Best Practices for Local Councils to avoid conflicts of interest in strata sustainability' here.

A slew of new incentives and rebates came to strata buildings in NSW in 2025 and you can see the full list here. Amanda Farmer from Your Strata Property online invited us back on her leading strata podcast with a segment on "The Best It's Even Been....Why now is the time to act on strata sustainability" which you can listen to here.

The start of 2025 was all about getting solar onto NSW residential strata buildings with 3 - 55 lots. The Prime Minister launched the NSW Solar for Apartment Residents (SoAR) grant in February as detailed in our article here. At the launch event, the Prime Minister quoted a key statistic from Wattblock's Electrify Strata project that only 3.5% of residential strata buildings have solar installed today. Wattblock got to work and assisted 6-8 Albert St Newtown to receive a $54,000 grant under this program. Congratulations to Veronica Tseng-Donald, the strata committee champion, who paved the way with the first grant application and made it easier for others to follow in her footsteps. Federal Energy minister Chris Bowen and NSW Energy minister, Penny Sharpe were onsite for the announcement of the first install. Our background video of how Wattblock assisted this strata scheme over the past 4 years and 8 months leading up to the solar install in October 2025 is here. 

In particular, we would like to thank the following solar installers who we have worked with as part of the NSW Solar for Apartment Residents grant program:
Atlas Renewables, Solahart,​​ Energus, Jusaso, Solar Energy Enterprises, Soltek, Sydney Solar Group, Good Earth Group. 4EVA Energy, Todae Solar, Guwing Green, Green.com.au, Solai, Joomi, Onepower, Bare Energy. MyEnergyGroup, Brighter Spark Electrical, Energy Culture, Green Tech and SolarBC. It has been very tough for these solar installers to provide quotations on the timelines required for the NSW SoAR grant and many of these solar installers have worked weekends to try to make deadlines and help our strata communities to avail themselves of the 50% grant funding.

Solar install of the year on a strata building goes to the 99kW solar system installed on Parkway SAN clinic (a commercial strata with medical consultation offices and clinics) on top of an embedded network. This project has been 3 years in the making and the installation was completed in December 2025 by Solahart. This is the largest solar on strata install in the Kur ring gai local council area. This one install will result in 480 kWh per day being produced in summer, 69.8 tonnes of CO₂ emissions reduced annually and $40,000 in yearly savings.

Fig 1: 99kW solar system installed on a commercial strata scheme - Parkway SAN Clinic

​Wattblock returned to Climate Action Week Sydney in 2025 (CAW25), interviewing Mike Whitby from the Galleria on their 6 year sustainability journey which saw them increase their NABERS energy rating from 0 stars to 4.5 stars.

In April 2025, Wattblock helped kickstart the electrification of apartment buildings in New Zealand with a presentation to the Auckland City Centre Residents group called "Power Up Your Apartment Building". New Zealand apartment buildings have not had any support from any tier of government to match what has been provided by local, state and federal governments in Australia. In this sense, Australian strata schemes can consider themselves very fortunate.

Back in NSW, the state government mandated sustainability had to be considered at every strata AGM from 1st July 2025. Our article on these changes is here and our FREE consideration of sustainability compliance form for strata committee members is here. A webinar which we did for Waverley council which covers the Federal Cheaper Home Batteries incentive (although this was tweaked on 15th December to reduce the incentives as the batteries get larger and add an extra $5bn into the scheme), the NSW Peak Demand Virtual Power Plant incentive for connecting a battery and all the strata law changes is here. We also had changes to embedded network regulation and our 1 minute summary of these changes is here.

In July, Wattblock became a data supplier to the NSW governments department of Climate Change, Energy, Environment & Water for their NSW Residential Apartment Energy Performance Baseline and Modelling program. This was after the NSW government conducted an assessment of datasets from CSIRO, NABERS and Corelogic (Cotality) and assessed that Wattblock had created a unique dataset on residential strata common area consumption. We are looking forward to seeing this important work by NSW "DCCEEW" set future policy frameworks for residential apartment buildings. Wattblock continues to use this same dataset in its local council program sustainability work including reports and solar strata audits which help local councils proactively target the strata buildings with the best solar opportunities for inclusion into their sustainability programs.

In the EV charging in strata world, Wattblock worked with companies such as Glenco (Locarno apartments in Forest Lodge), Karchargers (Presidio apartments in Erskineville, The Gantry in Camperdown, Paddington Green), Jetcharge (Gardenhouse apartments in Waterloo), EV Lobster (Mornington apartments in Breakfast Point), Sydney Electrical and Data / ElectrifyEV (Vantage North in Rhodes, Emerant Lane in Lane Cove, Aurora in Lane Cove), SEVC (44 Bent St Neutral Bay, Moore Park Gardens) and Future Charging Solutions (63 Reynold St Cremorne) for installation of full Level 2 EV charging backbones, allowing fast charging at each individual carparking space. We were also happy to see fast visitor charging installed by SydneyEVchargers​ at Marque Apartments in Waverton. A 'scalable' connection of an individual EV chargepoint to an individual apartment meter in Cremorne was completed by NES Electrical Service and the case study is here. It was great to see the NSW EV charging grants program recognising 2 Wattblock Customers who received grant funding (Aria in Waterloo and 12 Wallaroy Cres Woollahra) and the City of Sydney recognising 3 Wattblock customers (Verve in Erskineville, Zinc in Alexandria, Reflections in Pyrmont) who proceeded with EV charging on this video. The biggest NSW EV charging backbone installs are still in  progress and we'll tell you more about them in 2026.

Wattblock also supported the scale-up of low power QR code activated EV charging in residential strata buildings at the federal level. This saw the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) provide a $1.5m grant to Nox Energy. A case study of one of the first 10 strata schemes to get low power EV charging installed under this subsidized program is here and a video is here. There are a strong set of solutions in this 'Level 1 EV charging space' from Nox Energy, Alchemy Charge, Ready Steady Plug, Ohmie Go, Combined Energy & Powerlog. We think that more strata schemes which can't afford Level 2 EV charging backbones will investigate these slower charging speed (Level 1) charging options in 2026. Waverley/Woollahra/Randwick councils have additional local council funding to assist with installations into residential strata schemes in their local government area.

It is great to see both facilities management and strata management companies bringing more of a focus to strata sustainability. Wattblock did solar training for all the facilities managers at Sydney Building Management & Projects after assisting them with the Wharf Terraces (Woolloomooloo). Wattblock also did a webinar on All Things Energy with Netstrata for over 150 strata committee members in September. We also did sustainability CPD training with Bannerman's lawyers for over 100 strata managers,

Wattblock has continued to work with not-for-profit's in the residential strata space. This includes Solar Citizens who engaged us for a NABERS rating and an Energy Action Plan on "Shore" High Rise as part of Electrify Wolli Creek. With Renew, we were a guest at their Gold Coast Open Home weekend and trialled an electrify strata map in Burleigh Heads. With Inner West Community Energy we appeared on a panel with Jasper from Pingala and Lorenzo from Good Earth Group. We also participated in a Climate Action Week Sydney event at Parramatta library organised by Parents for Climate. Finally, we took Electrify Strata to the home of the electrification movement, doing a webinar with Rewiring Australia for the famous electrification postcode 2515. For those who missed it, the webinar slides are here. We also attended the Saul Griffith's book launch of Plug-In: The Electrification Handbook in Thirroul. Great to see Wattblock getting more than one mention in this book!

Wattblock is a member of the ClimateSalad ecosystem run by Mick Liubinskas and has collaborated with other ClimateSalad startups such as Allume Energy, Alchemy Charge, Ohmie Go and Ivygo. Wattblock did the initial solar feasibility study for the solar system on the revamped North Sydney council Olympic pool and it was great to see the innovative Coolsheet product, which takes heat from under the solar panels and transfers this to the pool heating system, getting its first commercial install.

Wattblock assisted the ACT government with their strategy for 'getting residential strata buildings' off gas, particularly in the difficult area of heat pump retrofits.

This year, the Jackson building in Abbotsford Cove is the electrified strata building of the year after previously participating in the Canada Bay Solar for Community program. In 2023 they installed common area solar and batteries. In 2025 they installed a common domestic heat pump system to replace their ageing gas storage hot water system. The strata committee champion, Robert Gill, has installed an induction cooktop and drives an electric vehicle which he charges from his private power outlet in his garage cage. Robert Gill is now one of the few NSW strata dwellers who is 'fully electrified'.

Fig 2: Common area domestic hot water heat pump system at 'Jackson'

​We are looking forward to 2026 where the strata sustainability & electrification starts to move from early adopters into a scale up phase. Wattblock is now working on a solar strata audit of ~1,000 strata schemes in Canada Bay area to estimate the cost, savings, payback and carbon emissions reduction of each of the individual strata buildings. This leverages Wattblock's Electrify Strata mapping project and we have already identified that 146 strata schemes in the Canada Bay area have solar installed today. See the map of existing solar installs in Canada Bay area here.

Finally, we would like to again thank David Burt, Matt Macdonald and the UNSW Founders team. UNSW Founders has supported Wattblock through the good times and the tough times and being part of the UNSW ecosystem is something we continue to be thankful for.

To everyone who has been with us on this journey this year, we encourage you to light a candle and save some energy this festive season. Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and Happy Chinese New Year!

A wish is that 2026 is the year that Balcony Solar takes off for Australian apartment buildings and provides renters as well as owner occupiers with a way to harness renewable energy.

The Wattblock Team