In New Zealand? Visit quarter.nz for body corporates.
Australia and New Zealand put solar on more detached houses than almost anywhere on earth, and almost none on apartment buildings. Not because the roofs are wrong — because nobody owns the decision. A building's roof is common property, the power bill it would offset is a common cost, and the paperwork sits with a committee that has enough to do. That is a solvable problem, and in several states somebody will pay for half of it.
Queensland has no apartment-specific solar grant open at present, which puts the project on its own numbers — and in Queensland those numbers are unusually good. The state has the strongest solar resource of any major Australian market, high air-conditioning and pump loads that run through the middle of the day, and federal certificates that discount the system price regardless of what the state does.
Governed by the Body Corporate and Community Management Act 1997, administered by the Office of the Commissioner for Body Corporate and Community Management.
Programmes open, allocate and close, and the terms change between rounds. Check the current position with the administering body before you budget around any of these.
Australian Government
The national certificate scheme that discounts the up-front cost of a solar system. In Queensland's high-yield zones this is worth more per kilowatt installed than in the southern states, and it is applied by the installer at the quote.
Official pageQueensland Government
The current list of Queensland household and business energy support. Worth checking each year for any apartment or body corporate stream.
Official pageQueensland's common loads are heavy and daytime-weighted. The bills will usually make the case on their own.
In Quarter: The building's common property spending is already in Quarter — this year's power bills and the two years before them — so the figure the whole business case rests on is one you pull rather than reconstruct from a drawer.
They decide whether the committee can contract or whether it must go to a general meeting.
North of the cyclone line this is not optional and it is not cheap. Get it specified properly before you compare quotes.
Queensland roofs work hard. Do the roof first if it is close to the end of its life.
Consumption, quotes, expected saving, funding route.
In Quarter: Build the motion from the quotes and the budget, send the notice to every owner off the ownership register on the statutory clock, and record the vote as it is cast — a decision carries its majority automatically and emails the outcome to whoever raised it.
Inverters have a shorter life than panels. Plan for the replacement rather than being surprised by it.
In Quarter: Upload the plan you already have and Quarter reads it into a costed schedule of items, lifecycles and due years. From there it projects the fund thirty years out and tells you the annual contribution that actually funds it.
The cheapest quote in a cyclone region is very often the one that is not rated for it.
Module-specific and strictly applied. Check before signing.
It is the part of the system that will need replacing first, and it belongs in the forecast.
A house puts solar on to cut one household's bill. A building puts solar on to cut a bill every owner is already paying through their levies — lifts, lighting, pumps, ventilation, the car park. That common load runs during the day, which is exactly when the panels produce.
The physical job takes a few days. The decision takes most buildings a year. Quarter compresses the second one.
Your actual common power spend, from your actual bills, rather than a vendor's estimate of a building like yours.
Scope, cost, funding, and the effect on levies — put as a resolution rather than a proposal, with the quotes attached.
The resolution, the quotes, the scheme details and the consumption history, in one place, on the day the round opens.
Quotes, contracts, approvals, invoices and warranties recorded against the decision that authorised them.
The bill before and the bill after, visible to every owner, so the next project is an easier conversation than this one was.
General information about Queensland, not legal or financial advice for your building. Legislation is amended and grant programmes open and close — check the current position with the Office of the Commissioner for Body Corporate and Community Management or the administering body before you act on anything here.
Tell us about your building in Queensland and we will show you exactly how Quarter would run it.
