Solar Homes Information Session for Landlords - May 31 2022

On Tuesday May 31st Brad Foletta from Solar Gain spoke to Landlords from Benalla about the benefits of solar for landlords.

Brad presented information about Solar rebates for rental properties from the Solar Victoria website https://www.solar.vic.gov.au/solar-rebates-rental-properties.

To summarise the benefits:

• Reduce the living expenses for your tenants.

• Cost of living is set to further increase in the near future. By fitting renewable energy solutions like solar PV or solar hot water you reduce the cost of living for your tenant, which in return helps assure that they can afford to pay their rent.
• It also builds loyalty from the tenant, not only will they be better able to afford to stay in your rental property, but they will also want to stay longer term as they will want to reap the benefits of this renewable solution that you have installed which helps avoid the pain and lost income of changing over tenants.

• Improve the value of your property. Home buyers are now looking for features such as a good size, high quality solar system when buying a property. It is well tested that this feature can increase the value of a home when put to market.
• Reduce your impact on the environment. Installing renewable solutions on your rental property will directly reduce the carbon footprint of your assets and help combat climate change.
• Make your house safer

• Mandatory switchboard safety switches (RCD’s) are mandatory for rental properties. If you have a property that needs the switchboard upgrading then you can have it done at the same time as a solar PV install at a reduced cost.
• Old gas appliances which also need to be inspected for possible leaks or carbon monoxide issues can be replaced with heat pump technology for both hot water heating and home heating.

 
Subsidies available:

Small scale technology certificates (STC’s) are generated when you install a Solar PV system or Solar hot water (including heat pumps) This incentive works like a rebate giving you:

• around $3100 off the upfront cost of a typical 6.6kW system.
• Around $1000 off the cost of a solar hot water (heat pump) unit.

There is a further Victorian state rebate available that is administered from the Solar Homes Program (Solar Victoria) Upon being deemed eligible you can be approved for:

• A $1400 rebate from the cost of fitting a solar PV system to your rental property.
• A further $1400 interest free loan is also available, which you can request that your tenant pays half of this.

Victoria Energy Efficiency Certificates:   A further ~$1000 of VEECS state “rebate” is available for heat pump hot water units when replacing an electric storage hot water unit in Victoria. With these Solar PV subsidies combined there is an upfront discount of almost $6000 which can take the cost of a good quality 6.6kW solar PV system on a standard type house install down from the $10k mark to just $4k.
 
For a solar hot water, the cost of a fully installed, good quality iStore heat pump hot water unit is reduced from $4000 to just $2000 if both above mentioned rebates are taken.

Download the Solar for Rentals Fact Sheet.

This meeting was organised by BSFG President Peter Holmes and it was very well attended.  There will be another meeting for Tenants on Tuesday June 14th from 7pm-8pm in the Fellowship Room at the Uniting Church in Carrier Street Benalla, opposite the Coles car park.

Peter Maddock