Solar Panels for Households

Community Owned Solar Study

The City of Campbelltown, with funding from the LGA Solar Innovation Fund has commenced a 3 phase study into the viability of Community Owned Solar Scheme on Council owned buildings.

What is Community Owned Solar (COS)?

In a nutshell a Commuity Owned Solar Scheme occurs where members of the community form a legal entity, most likely a Cooperative, for the purpose of owning and operating, in this case a Solar PV Scheme. These can be quite complicated and expensive to establish with a large amount of legal issues and restrictions to contend with. There have been a number of models established both interstate and overseas and whilst many of these had merit, they were established with huge grant funding and were not solar projects.

Phase 1 of the project shows that Council can pilot a 30kW system which could realistically lead to the development of 150 kW of roof top mounted solar over 5 sites with the involvement of 1000 investors each making an attractive return. This could be achieved while providing competitive solar energy to Councils across Adelaide with no up-front capital required from the Council.  

South Australia is considered as almost the ‘perfect storm’ for the success of COS
projects considering the following context:
 Electricity costs in SA are up by 68%
 Solar costs are down by 70%
 Uptake of solar installed in homes in the last 4 years  is around 120, 000 homes
 The average return on bank investments has dropped to 3-5% 
 Adelaide has excellent solar irradiance levels
 Leadership potential for local government in climate constrained economy

Solar Panels for Households