Parliament of Victoria is now accepting submissions on an Inquiry into access for apartment residents to clean, affordable electricity.
What’s The Aim Of The Apartment Energy Inquiry?
On 3 December 2025, the Legislative Assembly referred an inquiry into how access to renewable and affordable electricity can be expanded for Victorian apartment and multi-unit dwellers.
Inquiry Considerations
The Terms of Reference state the Inquiry should include consideration of:
- recent developments in energy supply and technology options for such dwellings.
- barriers and inequities experienced when accessing renewable and affordable electricity compared with other households.
- options including shared rooftop solar, façade or balcony solar, community batteries and virtual power plants.
- the impacts of those options on different groups of Victorians.
- any legislative, regulatory, planning or market reforms that could support the implementation of options, in line with Victoria’s emissions reduction (75-80% by 2035) and renewable energy (95% renewable electricity by 2035) targets.
Public submissions have now opened and the closing date for feedback (made here using a form) is 27 February 2026. The Inquiry will report to the Committee for consideration no later than 30 September 2026.
What happens from there is anyone’s guess.
The Challenge
According to Parliament Victoria, uptake of home solar systems in Victoria has primarily been confined to detached housing, typically among older owner-occupiers with higher incomes residing.
“Approximately 12 per cent of Victoria’s 2.5 million households live in apartments,” it says. “Of these around 63 per cent are renting, with low-income households over represented among apartment residents.”
Other Action On Apartment Renewable Energy Access
Some of the other efforts from the Victorian Government to expand access to renewables for apartment residents is the Solar For Apartments scheme. It has been offering rebates of up to $2,800 per household, or up to $140,000 per building, to support the installation of systems.
It’s not actually a rebate as such, but what they call it. The cash is applied by the chosen solar retailer as a discount on the invoice to reduce upfront costs. Round 3 is still open for applications.
Victoria, The Home Of Cutting-Edge Solar Sharing Tech
One of the options to be considered noted above is shared rooftop solar. It just so happens the state is home to Allume Energy‘s SolShare; a device designed *and* manufactured in Melbourne that enables multiple apartments to share a single solar power system.
Suitable for buildings with 5-60 units, SolShare connects to each circuit behind an apartment’s existing smart meter, and “splits” the output of the solar system based on demand in the building. This may be distributed in equal shares, or varying allocations depending on requirements.
An example installation is in the first image in this article, completed in 2019. The project connected a 44-apartment building in Altona North to rooftop solar energy. Allume Energy estimates participating households are saving $716.72 per year.
It’s a couple of years old, but this guide explains SolShare in more detail: Is SolShare Worth It For Multi-Unit Properties?
The company has gone gangbusters over the last few years and established a foothold overseas as well.
Not Just A Victorian Issue
One of the failures of Australia’s rooftop solar revolution thus far is to bring many apartment dwellers along for the ride. And this is a huge group.
More than 2.5 million Australians (10.3% of the population) live in apartments. Apartments make up 16% of all private dwellings, and accounted for nearly one-third (30.9%) of the increase in private dwellings since 2016 (Source: ABS).
Then there are other multi-unit dwellers groups, such as those who live in flats, units, townhouses, duplexes and such.
But while a big chunk of the population is still not (directly) benefiting from solar power; these groups are still benefiting from the effects of the 4 million+ small-scale solar power systems installed elsewhere on reining in wholesale electricity prices.
Still, there’s obviously more that still needs to be done.
Apartment Solar Resources
Just on apartments and solar power generally, we have some interesting guides and posts on related issues here on SolarQuotes, including:
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