How Vinnies cracked rooftop solar’s landlord problem

afr.com:

At Vinnies’ Dandenong South warehouse, 230 solar panels have slashed the non-profit’s power bill from $1800 a month to $300. The big saving came via a series of deals brokered by AGL Energy with the charity’s landlords.

Those deals looked sweet in 2021 but – after huge increases in electricity prices since – “we are probably already miles in front”, says Vinnies’ head of policy and research Gavin Dufty.

Jeff Antcliff, general manager commercial at the St Vincent de Paul Society, at the Dandenong South warehouse. The 2000-metre property is the standout site for Vinnies’ rooftop solar plunge. Elke Meitzel

Those deals still have eight years to run. But Vinnies not only got a great deal on electricity. With AGL’s help it solved the “landlord problem” – which small and medium businesses blame for a rooftop solar takeup rate that lags far behind the world-leading one-in-three Australian homes with solar panels.

The problem in a nutshell is that most commercial and industrial firms rent their premises, and landlords have lacked incentives to install solar panels that would benefit their tenants but not themselves.

That’s a shame for those businesses because they miss out on the potential savings on their power bills. But it’s also a setback for the grid because commercial firms that operate mostly during daylight hours use a lot of power when solar – which ramps up in the morning and peaks between about 10am and 4pm before ramping down for the evening – is generating.

By contrast, most of Australia’s 3.4 million solar households aren’t home during the day, and flood the grid with surplus solar power on sunny days, sending power prices down, undermining the viability of coal power stations as well as utility-scale solar and