Single storey, tiled, clear of tall trees and with a garage on the side. A Carrum Downs family home is about as simple as a solar and battery install gets, so the thinking goes into sizing it for the next ten years.
Carrum Downs went up over about twenty years from the early 1980s, and it shows in how alike the houses are. Brick veneer, one level, concrete tiles on a hipped roof, a single or double garage at one end. Blocks are a sensible size and the street trees are low. For solar that means broad, unshaded roof faces a ladder reaches easily, and for a battery it means a garage wall close to the meter box. Very little about the building gets in the way.
So the real question in Carrum Downs is how much to put on. These are family homes with people in them from four in the afternoon, and nearly all of them still burn gas for ducted heating, hot water and the cooktop. Each of those appliances is somewhere between middle-aged and worn out. When they are replaced with electric ones, the house draws a good deal more from the roof. A system sized only for today's power bill will be too small within a few years.
We have not published a Carrum Downs case study yet, and we would sooner say so than dress up someone else's roof. The jobs further down are from Seaford, Langwarrin and Frankston, the three suburbs around you, on houses of the same build. For everything else we do locally, see our Carrum Downs page.
Each part is chosen with the next appliance swap in mind.
Jinko Tiger Neo or Aiko panels across the north, east and west faces of the hip roof. With no second storey and little shade, more of a Carrum Downs roof is usable than most, and filling it now costs less than coming back to add panels later.
Sigenergy SigenStor, GoodWe, Tesla Powerwall or Sungrow, mounted in the garage with bollards where a car parks beside it. Modular batteries let you start with enough for tonight's dinner and dishwasher, then add capacity when the heating goes electric.
We choose a hybrid inverter that can take the extra battery modules and the larger loads to come, and we confirm your supply and export limit with the network before the design is locked in.
While the switchboard is open we can leave space and capacity for a heat pump from Emerald, Reclaim, iStore or Haier, an induction cooktop and an EV charger. Boards from the 1980s sometimes need replacing first, and we say so at the site visit.
The full range is on our products page.
Tier-one panels with 25-year performance warranties, laid out for the roof faces you have.
Hybrid and string inverters, chosen so a battery can join the system now or later.
Home batteries sized to the evening peak, with backup circuits set up for outages.
Home chargers wired into the same system and set to charge from your solar first.
None of these is in Carrum Downs. They are the closest written-up installs on the same sort of house.
Next door in Seaford, 10.925kW of solar on a tile roof with a single-phase GoodWe inverter and 24.96kWh of GoodWe storage in the garage. The switchboard was upgraded as part of the job.
A busy family house in nearby Langwarrin with 21.85kW of Jinko solar, 45.2kWh of Sigenergy storage behind an upgraded switchboard in the garage, a 270L iStore heat pump and an EV charger.
In Frankston, 26 Jinko panels and a GoodWe inverter with four battery modules, 33.28kWh in all. A new board went in with room to spare for the circuits that come later.
You do not have to do everything at once. You do need a design that allows for it.
We look at the roof, garage and board, and write down what runs on gas, how old each appliance is and whether a car charger is likely.
Panel count and inverter are set for the all-electric house. The battery can start smaller and grow.
The quote shows the solar and battery now, and what each later stage would add.
Solar Victoria eligibility, the federal discounts and the network connection are handled by us before the install date.
Our own electricians fit the panels, inverter and battery. A single-storey job like this usually takes a day. Monitoring is set up on your phone and the Certificate of Electrical Safety is issued.
They are easy to mix up. Here is what each one actually covers.
Small-scale technology certificates reduce the price of the solar at the point of sale. Every eligible system gets them and you do not lodge anything yourself.
Around 30 percent off an approved battery, with no income test. This is the only battery incentive. The Solar Victoria battery rebate and battery loan closed in 2025.
A rebate and an interest-free loan for eligible owner-occupiers, covering solar panels and inverters only. When the gas heater is replaced, a different scheme applies, explained on our Carrum Downs heating and cooling page.
That is why we can size a system for a house that has not finished changing.
Solar, battery, reverse cycle heating, heat pump hot water, induction and EV charging are all installed by Powerband, so stage one is designed knowing stage three.
No Carrum Downs write-up yet. The examples we show are named for the suburbs they are in.
Accredited through Solar Accreditation Australia, a New Energy Tech Approved Seller, and installed by our own A-Grade electricians with nothing subcontracted.
About 19 minutes from the depot at U44/10 Speedwell St, which keeps site visits and any return call simple.
Live Google reviews. Look for the Sigenergy, GoodWe and Powerwall jobs.
Anything else, call 0466 355 441. An electrician will answer the question.
No. Put the solar on now and size it for the electric appliances that will replace the gas ones. The array is the part that is awkward to enlarge later. The battery can be extended when the load goes up.
With a modular battery, yes. We choose an inverter that can take the extra modules and leave the wall space for them, so adding storage later is a short visit.
Concrete tiles of that age are generally fine. We check for cracked or slipped tiles when we walk the roof, replace any we break during the install and tell you beforehand if we see a problem with the roof itself.
In most Carrum Downs homes, on the garage wall nearest the switchboard, with bollards if a car parks alongside. If the garage has been converted to a room, a shaded outside wall is the next choice.
Boards from the late 1990s and 2000s usually are. Boards from the early 1980s often are not. We open it at the site visit and include any upgrade in the fixed price.
We work across the City of Frankston every week from Somerville. Our published case studies nearest to you are in Seaford, Langwarrin and Frankston, and we are happy to talk you through any of them.
Tell us what still runs on gas. We will visit, size the system for where the house is heading and send one written price. No obligation.
