Solar in Noble ParkThree roofs where there used to be one
Noble Park was built as a suburb of 1950s to 1970s houses on good-sized blocks. Over the past few decades a large share of those blocks have been redeveloped, and a single house has become two, three or four units or townhouses along a shared driveway. Walk the streets either side of the station and the pattern repeats block after block.
For solar, that changes the sums. A unit roof is a fraction of the size of the house it replaced, it is often cut up by hips and party walls, and the neighbouring unit can shade part of it. The answer is not to give up. It is to use fewer, higher-output panels on the faces that work, and a battery sized to what that roof can fill. Several of the smaller systems we have installed elsewhere carry 16 to 20 panels and still run the household through the evening.
Then there is the question of who has to agree. On a strata title the roof and outside walls may be common property, and the meters for every unit are often grouped at the front of the block. We check both before quoting, because they decide what can be installed and where the cables run. The original houses that remain have their own issue, which is an old switchboard. All of it is covered with our other work in Noble Park.