[On screen text: Solar for Apartments Rebate Round 3 is open. Apply now.]
Speaker: Josh [On screen text: Josh. Apartment owner.]
Hi, I'm Josh. I'm one of the owners here in Sunny Fitzroy.
The main reason we decided to get solar installed on the building, there was a new government rebate scheme coming up.
It's not only good for the environment cuz we're drawing less from the grid.
It's a bit of a sense of community for the building that we're doing something that contributes to everyone who lives in it.
We have a completely shared solar grid on the roof which feeds into a single hub that sits within our basement.
That hub distributes power to individual power boxes that sit in our lobby.
What that does is basically enable fair distribution of power.
I'm one of the lucky ones that live on the top floor, so, I get to look out at it every single day that I get up.
Sitting there on your computer with the AC on in summer thinking this is costing me 70% of what it would be costing me if this wasn't here is a massive benefit.
Speaker: Jono
[On screen text: Jono. Retailer, Fitzroy.]
Typically, I'd recommend customers get prepared before they reach out to a solar retailer.
And a few steps you can put in place are knowing the number of lots that are on the property.
Have a think about how we're going to get equipment onto the roof, a photo of the meter board.
[On screen text: Solar prep checklist. Note the number of lots on the property. Is there easy access to the roof. Supply photos of existing meter board.]
Speaker: Mark
[On screen text: Jono. Retailer, Templestowe.]
A lot of the success in a solar for apartments project comes down to communication.
If the body corporate uh committee and the solar champion is communicating well with the owners and residents, um you'll find that the project will go much smoother.
Speaker: Jono
So, we're here to solve all these little challenges that we have at apartment blocks and at the end of the day we'll find a way to make sure that the apartment blocks can have access to solar.
[On screen text: Templestowe.]
So different systems are more suited sometimes to different buildings in this particular case like this Temple Stow apartment complex.
So what it meant with this uh selection of technology is that that more owners could come up with a solution that would better suit their individual needs.
Then we could tailor the individual sizes of the systems to suit their energy usage.
Speaker: Pauline
[On screen text: Pauline. Resident, Templestowe.]
We decided to install the panels on our apartment building to keep the costs down as everything is becoming higher.
Speaker: Josh
Terms of savings, the living costs for those living in the building.
I think what we're seeing is something around 35-40% saved off our energy bills.
Obviously that varies from summer to winter.
That actually is pretty accurate based on what we were told to pre-install.
[On screen text: Solar Victoria logo. Starts saving with solar. solar.vic.gov.au/apartments]
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