Wharf Terraces Solar and Battery for Strata: The Gamechangers

The type of people who live in the Wharf Terraces include the former CEO of Louis Vuitton Australia, Phillip Corne and Greg Duncan, former owner of Trivett Automotive Group, Australia’s largest prestige automotive group. You will also find some retired supreme court judges, economic consultants and hardcore business types. It also doesn't hurt to have a Chairperson who was the daughter of an electrician....

​Fig 1: Wharf Terraces prior to installation of solar panels

​Wharf Terraces is a Building Management Committee (BMC) which is on the Woolloomooloo bay opposite the Woolloomooloo finger wharf. It has a set of 34 high end townhouses in a world class location, a marina and a commercial carpark in a BMC setup. The residential townhouses are technically a separate strata scheme from the marina which is its own strata plan and the commercial carpark which occupies its own space and is managed by Secure Parking. The site has Sydney Building Management & Projects as the facilities managers and a concierge service.
 
The roof of the Wharf Terraces is visible from the café of the Sydney Modern Art Gallery. A section of the rooftop of the Wharf Terraces is actually part of a public walking/bike trail used by the public. The Wharf Terraces rooftop has ‘green garden’ elements intermixed with pebble insulation on a waterproofed concrete rooftop.

Fig 2: Wharf Terraces already had a 'green' roof with planter boxes and a bee farm

​​​You wouldn’t be surprised to find an early adopter mover on EV charging getting three phase electricity from the BMC for charging his Tesla, while later adopters would be limited to single phase charging. Nor would you be surprised if an individual lot owner protested that the analogue accumulation meter for the private apartment shouldn’t be upgraded to a smart meter (even though every apartment meter was being upgraded in bulk at the same time for this project). You also wouldn’t be surprised if it took six years to take a decision on solar.
 
The City of Sydney funded a free solar report to the building in 2019. When a strata scheme is absolutely blessed with a huge rooftop area at a low height, it is a standout solar install opportunity. There is enough roofspace to fit ~200kW of solar panels using modern high wattage panels.
 
However, there were a couple of game changers that occurred between 2019 and 2024, when solar was finally installed on Wharf Terraces.
 
One of these was the proliferation of electric vehicles. Not just Teslas but other high end electric vehicles had made their way into the Wharf Terraces. 

Fig 3: Example of an EV chargepoint with cost recovery for the Owners Corporation

​The cost of battery storage per kWh had started to come down to a level where it was feasible to do a solar/battery feasibility study for the residential common area meter, which could be used to power electric vehicle charging. ​ Also, the solar sharing technology from Allume Energy, a Melbourne startup which had spent 9 years refining a solar sharing system for apartment buildings, was now starting to become compelling and ended up being the key gamechanger.

Fig 4: One of 4 separate Allume Energy Solshare systems installed at the site

​Rather than doing a large common area solar system to service internal building functions like lifts, gym and the external marina, the ability to send solar power into the 34 individual apartments totally transformed the business case. Sharing solar into the individual apartments also allows the individual apartments to harness property valuation uplift. In May 2024, the Domain Real Estate site found that individual apartments in Sydney could get up to an 11.7% property valuation uplift through implementation of ‘energy features’. To get the full property valuation uplift you would need double glazed windows, solar into the apartments, EV charging and disconnection of all gas. Individual apartments at Wharf Terraces might set you back $6.5m plus some loose change. However, the Wharf Terraces has taken its first steps towards electrification and harnessing property valuation uplift from improved sustainability. There is still more to do over the ensuing years as people retrofit gas cooktops with induction cooktops etc.
 
A key challenge in sharing solar power into individual apartments which have 3 phase power (and analogue accumulation meters) is that you have to upgrade all the meters to smart meters. The smart meters can then measure ‘solar export’ or ‘feed-in’ of any excess solar generated for a particular apartment, which isn’t consumed within that particular apartment. Also, with today’s Allume Solshare technology you will just pick one of the three phases to connect the solar sharing system up to.

Fig 5: One of 4 upgraded meterboard locations for individual apartment meters

​Implementation of a billing and administration system for EV charging (Casacharge) by Karchargers allowed the Owners Corporation to record and recoup the cost of electricity which was fed into electric vehicles, coming off the residential common area meter. The individual apartment meters are in two different physical buildings from the carpark building, so it is not feasible to run power from the individual apartment meters across the courtyard to the carpark building for charging individual electric vehicles. Karchargers installed a Smappee electricity monitoring device on the apartment consumption to assist with data, which further informed the Allume Solar Sharing opportunity.

Fig 6: Electricity monitoring device installed to measure loads for dynamic EV charging load balancing

​ Even a complex such as Wharf Terraces has challenges with having an older main switchboard. It is difficult to be able to upgrade these main switchboards for EV charging, particularly when original electrical contractors no longer have records of all the supplies that went into the main switchboard in the first place. For example, lever arch folders in metal filing cabinets were the defacto storage for this type of information, at the time that the building was originally constructed in 1998. When the original employees left the company, the knowledge of where the information was in the lever arch folders was lost.
 
The final design of solar to be installed was limited to servicing the residential strata plan of the building and not for the marina, BMC or commercial carpark. In order to get something moving, you need to reduce the complexity of the stakeholder matrix which you are dealing with and multiple strata plans, BMC committees and commercial operators typically can't move at the same time on solar. An oversized 22kW of solar with 24kWh battery (from Energizer) was installed specifically to provide solar-powered ev charging for the residential carpark.

Fig 7: 26.6kWh battery storage on the residential carpark common area meter

​​Then 78kW of solar was installed and connected to 4 Allume Energy Solshares. While some suppliers tried to quote with 3 Allume Energy Solshares, it was deemed a better design to install 4 Allume Solshares to avoid voltage drop from long cable runs. At one point it was considered to install 2 Allume Solshares for 30 apartments and 4 individual solar systems for the 4 remaining apartments, as per the thought process outlined in this Solarquotes article "Solar for Strata: The Definitive Guide to Solshare's Pros and Cons". However, for the final solution, 2 Allume Energy Solshares were installed in close proximity to each of 2 apartment meterboards, for 2 physically separate buildings on the waterfront. This meant that each Allume Energy Solshare is sharing solar across 8 or 9 apartments.
 
While this is notionally only ~2.3kW of solar per apartment, the optimisation algorithm included with the Allume Energy Solshare can actually provide ‘usable solar power at the time of need’ about 40% more effectively than individual solar systems. This means the individual apartments have ‘virtual’ access to the equivalent of 3.2kW of solar each, while physically there is only 2.3kW of solar installed per residential lot.

Fig 8: East-West oriented panels to match solar generation to internal apartment loads e.g. peak after work period

​Another key learning was to always use qualified renewable energy engineers for solar feasibility studies rather than relying on solar salespeople. Also, Wattblock brought a multi-disciplinary team of consultants with qualifications in business, legal, finance and accounting to complement the core solar engineering competency and support the strata committee champions over a 32 month period. (The Wattblock team has a cumulative 28 years of experience on strata committees holding the roles of Chairperson, Secretary and Treasurer so was able to talk the 'strata language'.) Also, just because there is extra roofspace doesn’t mean that it needs to be used immediately for solar. The Building Management Committee (BMC), marina, Secure Parking commercial carpark could use additional space at a later point for their own solar systems.

Fig 9: Oversized common area solar system primarily for charging electric vehicles and battery storage

​Also, to minimize issues with water penetration the German engineered Schletter ballast-mounted racking system was used. This system has already been used by other waterfront strata schemes in Sydney such as Westpoint (Drummoyne) and Horizons (Collaroy). This approach was designed to minimize physical impact to the structure of the Wharf Terraces building and reduce the risk of water penetration into the expensive apartments.

Fig 10: Ballast weighted racking system to avoid penetrating the waterproof membrane

Other waterfront strata buildings on Sydney harbour, such as 62 Wunulla Rd Point Piper had installed solar systems as far back as 2013 and Quay Grand at Circular Quay installed 99.9kW in 2017. However, Wharf Terraces is the first of a new breed of Sydney harbour waterfront stratas which are electrifying and the first example of installing a solar and battery system primarily for EV charging in any strata building in Sydney. Wharf Terraces is a showcase of how to electrify a strata building through installing solar, to not just target common property consumption, but to also target individual apartment consumption and maximize property valuation uplift. According to Will Anstee, Housing Partnerships Manager for Allume Energy, Wharf Terraces “Arguably [has] the nicest view from a SolShare site!”

The Wharf Terraces looks directly at the Woolloomooloo finger wharf where Russell Crowe is attempting to sell his penthouse apartment for $42m, as well as the Garden Island naval base and out into Sydney Harbour.

Watch a slideshow of Wharf Terraces Solar, Battery, EV charging for strata here.​
Find Wharf Terraces at 10 Lincoln Cres Woolloomooloo on the Electrify Strata map for City of Sydney here.
Find out more about Allume Energy Solar Sharing here.
​Take the Solar Readiness for Strata online training course here.
Watch over 40 videos on solar for strata here.
​Find all government rebates and incentives available to NSW strata schemes here.
Watch 20 videos of strata committee members talking about electrifying their strata buildings here.

Brent Clark
​Contributor, Strata Energy News