A new Australian company named SunTenants is trying to solve the problem of making the installation of solar panels / storage on rental properties a tenable one for both parties involved.
SunTenants – about the system.
The process works for both residential and commercial systems, and is simplified into four steps on the website:
- Owners install a solar PV system
- Tenants pay extra rent, but save more on electricity
- SunTenants will monitor the system to ensure it’s a mutually beneficial setup.
- Owners will make returns on their investments, and tenants will save money on their electricity (more than the extra rent they’re asked to pay).
For owners, the enhanced property value and increased rental yields will equal over 10% return on the solar investment, according to founder Dr Bjorn Sturmberg.
An article on The Fifth Estate quoting Dr Sturmberg at the All-Energy Australia 2017 Conference:
“Almost one in five Australian households have solar – that’s over 1.7 million properties,” he said. (In Queensland and South Australia over one in three Australian households have solar power installed.)
“But one in three Australians are locked out of solar.” Dr Sturmberg continued. “They’re locked out of energy efficiency as well. They are locked out of EV charging when it comes along. They are locked out of everything because they rent and or live in an apartment.”
“It’s a problem because solar is now the cheapest energy and so you are locked out of taking control of your energy bills,” he said.
“There’s a huge amount of value in there,” Dr Sturmberg continued. “How do we unlock that value?”
His solution is SunTenants – where both the tenant and the homeowner are incentivised to ‘invest’ in solar power for a rental property.
An example of the SunTenants System
On their website, the company offer the following example of how their system can benefit both the landlord and the tenant:
If you want to learn more about the system they have released an overview video about the process which you can view below:
