University of Technology Sydney researchers say a “use it or lend it” approach to Australian home rooftops would make solar accessible to more Australian households. But suggested ways to implement such a scheme will no doubt cause some pushback.
How Would “Use It Or Lend It” Work?
Under the “use it or lend it” concept, owners of suitable detached and semi-detached homes *could* be obligated to either install solar power systems or make their rooftops available to the government for publicly-owned systems. Home owners hosting these government-maintained and insured systems would receive compensation, such as annual lease payments.
I can hear some screams already, but read on and bear in mind this is just an idea, not something already in the Federal or a state government pipeline.
What would be cheap-as-chips electricity generated by the government-owned systems could be allocated to two solar-disadvantaged groups: low-income households and renters. The allocation would be possible through a Virtual Energy Network (VEN) platform.
The “use it or lend it” approach could also be useful in addressing rental property owners reluctant or unable to invest in a solar power system state the study authors1.
Participating property owners would be able to buy a government-owned system at any time, with system pricing based on a “cost neutrality” principle, i.e.; the government does not profit2.
Carrot, And Maybe A (Big) Stick
Rights and obligations under a lend it or use it approach would be set out under legislation, as would the mandatory installation of solar panels on new and substantially renovated homes and new apartment buildings also suggested by the researchers.
“The former has the theoretical advantage of allowing a qualified entity to initiate the change (‘lend it’) at any time,” say the researchers. “The latter would force landowners to ‘use it’ (consistent with other legislated obligations on landowners), but the trigger (seeking development consent for substantial renovation or new dwellings) may be years, if not decades, away. Another trigger could be legislated deadlines.”
Further (bolding mine):
“Given the urgency of transitioning to renewable energy and the lost opportunity represented by suitable homes where owners have not adopted solar voluntarily, consideration should also be given to the institutional arrangements necessary for implementing a legislated scheme that grants the government default solar rights on suitable properties.”
Is Use It Or Lend It A Good Way To Go?
More than 4.2 million small-scale (<100 kW capacity) solar power systems have been installed across Australia to date. Looking at recent satellite imagery of Australian suburbs and towns shows plenty of houses with solar panels, but also a bunch with still ‘naked’ rooftops.
While we’re already seeing issues in some areas where the amount of surplus solar energy exported into the grid is creating challenges in terms of electricity system management, technology advances such as flexible solar exports is helping there. It’s also where the federal government home battery rebate can do some good, freeing up network capacity to install more solar.
The use it or lend it concept is part of a University of Technology Sydney study looking at the factors influencing residential solar panel uptake in the Sydney metropolitan area from 2013 to 2024.
The researchers found market factors including solar system costs and electricity prices had a significant effect on solar adoption and capacity, while feed-in tariffs have a negligible impact — a good thing given feed-in tariffs are generally becoming increasingly stingy. The study also found housing affordability as a key barrier to solar adoption for property owners.
So, what are your thoughts on “use it or lend it” for boosting residential rooftop solar uptake in Australia; particularly the prospect of granting the government default solar rights on suitable properties? And landlords, while you’re here learn why installing solar panels on investment properties can make as much sense as putting a system on your own home.
Footnotes
- SolarQuotes founder Finn Peacock has previously suggested another approach to support renters – affordable, portable plug and play batteries. ↩
- This would also call for good quality systems installed at fair prices — some programs involving government procurement of equipment and installation have rolled out what appear to be overpriced systems. ↩
About Michael Bloch
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To me this is a stupid idea:
1. Letting the government to take home owners’ roofs is basically “nationalisation” and it was the process of taking private property by the new communist goverments in Eastern Europe after the WW 2.
So, in othe words Australia becomes a little more communist, then it is.
Is this what we want?
2. There is already a surplus of electricity in some states. For example in Queensland, a solar farmer, closed his farm because the local electricity supplier Ergon Energy offered him negative prices.
Shouldn’t then, the energy be exported to other states with lower solar adoption?
Also since the solar energy is plentiful during the day, we need more batteries to store it for overnight consumption.
3. The government is the worst manager.
Remember the ceiling insulation scheme blunder?
I dont want the government to send shonky solar installers and mess with my tiled roof and then me paying roof plumbers to patch the leaks.
University, please leave our roofs alone!
Hi Alex,
I take it you’ve handed in your Medicare card? You don’t use tap water, the roads or the sewer?
Normanton Solar Farm is an early adopter who’s now found the economic reality that midday solar is now a “worthless” product, due in part to Qld relying more heavily on coal than any other state. Coal pays to stay online, causing negative prices because it’s too inflexible, so Normanton is the perfect case for a battery.
Pinks batts was in every measure a success. Fast economic stimulus, durable investment in comfort, efficiency & lower costs, lower rate of house fires. While 4 people died installing, 3 were electrocuted by foil products already banned under the scheme.
The “failure” was pure propaganda against home insulation, which threw industry investment & jobs under the bus for political points. Same people said privatisation was good for us
Hi Anthony,
Yes, I use Medicare, tap water, roads and the sewer and I am paying in full for all of them.
I am also paying for inefficiencies and blunders of our governments such as the Snowy Hydro 2.0 project which now is projected to cost 20 bn from the initial 2 bn. And when its going to be ready, it will be already obsolete.
I am an advocate for TOTAL house insulation, not just the roof.
Do we know how much energy consumption was estimated the scheme saved?
How do we know it was a success?
By what metrics?
Why the goverment mandated new home energy efficiency standards are so low?
People won’t pay more to make their new home more energy efficient than the minumum standard.
Hi Alex,
Many people use “communist” as an epithet. They conflate it with socialism, ignoring the society & social bonds that make us successful as a species. I list off the things government should own and run as a public good, because rugged individualism would never provide them, nor should private for profit operators be allowed to buy them and gouge us.
I don’t advocate for compulsory acquisition, but electricity is a public good and there’s a lot of roofs, especially large warehouses, that don’t attract solar because the businesses under them don’t see enough direct private benefit.
People might pay for efficiency but the investment industry wont. Builders follow fashion & lobby for their own back pocket against your interest. Sadly it’s the latter who have the government’s ear, even if the public servants are offering better advice.
Insulation is a no-brainer but what sticks or carrots would you offer?
Hi Anthony,
Unfortunately, I use the word communism as someone who lived in it the first 30 years of life!
Then the next 30 years, in a capitalist Australia which I see slowly drifting to the left.
At least in my opinion.
I think that running Australia is a combination of big corporations and unions, and thirdly us, the electorate.
As energy efficiency, I see our governments trying to invent the wheel, instead of copying countries well ahead in this game, such Europeans.
I did, and installed uPVC double glazing (with tinted outer glaze, lowE inside glaze and argon in the gap) throught the house in addition to roof and walls insulation, windows sun shading, solar on all roof, 2 home batteries and an EV.
My proposal for the carrot?
Better society education.
Thanks Alex,
I think we’re on a similar page but as much as we’ve made progress, the political center has been dragged right; I lament that Menzies, who founded the Liberal party, thought “conservative” was a dirty word when his party openly embraces it today.
Now we have opportunists trying to split the vote, and a concentrated media landscape that consistently conflates the interests of broader society with the interests of the very very rich.
Funnily enough these people own the media too, but sadly the the union movement doesn’t do well in pointing this out.
In the long term, Europeans are going to find they’re impoverished compared to those with better exposure to the sun. Luckily we can wire them up with some long DC transmission lines instead of the long gas pipes coming out of Russia at the moment.
Well Said Anthony, as a Victorian who is being gouged by the privatised energy sector I couldn’t agree more with your comments.
Anthony, where is this political centre dragged Right? The Overton Window and the media are clearly dragging it Hard Left! Do you have a source for that claim that Menzies considered conservative a dirty word? I did a quick search and am not seeing anything.
Likewise I’m not seeing opportunists seeking to vote split. You have those who want to keep serving the Right, and those who want to be Labor Lite, and out of power for generations just so long as they keep their shadow ministries. Similarly Labor want to keep in power rather than govern.
As for concentrated media landscape, is it? Oh there’s no denying the vast majority of the media live in Leftist enclaves in capital cities, but I suspect that’s not what you mean. Rather your focus is who owns what, except does ownership often have any impact on content?
Hi John,
I’m not sure how hard you’re looking.
When forming the Liberal Party in 1944, Menzies deliberately chose the word “Liberal” to contrast his party with reactionary conservatism. He explained that the party’s name was chosen “because we were determined to be a progressive party, willing to make experiments, in no sense reactionary but believing in the individual, his right and his enterprise, and rejecting the socialist panacea”. This remark—repeated in later statements such as his 1964 “Liberal Creed”—made clear he saw the Liberal Party as forward‑looking rather than conservative in the traditional sense
https://www.azquotes.com/quote/606037
John I think you’re living in an alternate reality.
Parliamentary Library data & media diversity inquiries show News Corp Australia controls roughly 64% of the metro & national print market, Nine Entertainment (SMH, The Age, AFR) holds 26%. Together they run close to 90% of daily newspaper readership across the country.
A Senate inquiry and research by RMIT, Uni of Sydney & UTS describe Australia’s news market as being controlled by three or four corporate groups that influence over 90% of commercial news sources. News Corp alone is estimated to reach more than 17 million Australians monthly across print, digital, and broadcast platforms.
Fun fact: 175 Murdoch-owned newspapers worldwide supported the 2003 Iraq war. The Independent described “startling unanimity,” all News Corp’s global outlets “shared Murdoch’s enthusiasm for the invasion”. The sole exception being the Hobart Mercury which soon flipped to the company line.
Thanks for supplying a quote. The Sydney Institute and Menzies Research Centre disagree with your interpretation. According to them he saw himself as centrist, was committed to king and country, and sought to make the Communist Party illegal. There’s mention of 19th century English Whigs, and the notion of natural rights. Menzies was not progressive in the sense of today’s Regressives, nor did he consider patriots, social conservatives, or God fearing church goers to be reactionary. Rather that was Marxism, and selfish laissez-faire capitalism. Terms change over time.
With the right keywords, easy to find. But without the right terms …
Oh I don’t dispute that News Corp is a major player, or that Australia’s media is somewhat monopolistic, I just don’t think it’s relevant. The journalistic groupthink, and the media’s deviation from mainstream society is the real issue – basically Labor v Greens. So long as Murdoch et al. make a profit, they don’t tend to worry about the details.
Hi John,
So long as Murdoch et al. make a profit, they don’t tend to worry much about the facts.
However legacy media empires are being eaten by big tech sucking up all the advertising revenue you need to fund proper journalism. ie ethical, researched, properly edited, long form content is expensive, we’re now awash with cheap opinion, sound bites, clicksbait.
Bare nipples contravene “community standards” on FB but bare faced lies are actively promoted. They create an emotional response & drive engagement.
tRump is a perfect example. A moral vacuum, producing a torrent of lies, making headlines that appeal to prejudice. Fact-checking is swamped by the next clickbait sensation.
Social media serves outrage porn, fear, distrust & keeps people siloed with fellow travellers, so what appears to be “mainstream” isn’t at all.
You’re right about terms changing.
Do we really need to be commandeering rooves at this point of the transition? We seem to have more solar than anyone can use at the moment. Plenty of us are already curtailing production. Wait until a few more coalers are ready to close.
Fully agree with the need to immediately provide renters and low-income families with a slice of the benefits of renewables. This is one of Australia’s many great inequities.
But all that’s needed is ‘virtual’ solar – a special tariff for those who can’t access solar that behaves a lot like a 6.6kW system but without the panels. Do something useful with all those ‘smart’ meters and surplus solar!
We could call it the ‘here’s your $275 and then some, coz renewables are damn cheap’ tariff. It might wake a few people up.
Good to see one retailer offering 6c/kWh 9am to 4pm in Energex zone. We’re almost there.
Can’t see that working who’d want government workers inspecting and cleaning solar panels on their place every year !!
Also sometimes roofs are damaged during installation, sounds like a communist idea just as well owners would have the right whether to or not !!
Given our panels had to be removed and over 60 tiles be replaced after first installers dodgy effort, I can see issues regarding responsibility for leaking roofs being a real issue.
Novel idea, but I think the university of Sydney needs to reacquaint itself with the Himler report and the consequences that has had on public utilities and government services ever since…
Low cost government services are just not allowed, as it might affect private industries ability to gouge you.
Careful Andrew,
The walls have ears…
Anthony, that cartoon is gold!
The multinationals not only own the media, but also the government of this colony, whichever team is batting at any time, I think. Otherwise why would we pay through the nose for our own gas, while “giving it away” overseas?
https://australiainstitute.org.au/post/australias-great-gas-giveaway/
And when will Apple, Amazon, Google, et al, begin to pay non-negligible tax? For a start, no tax-free profit transfer through massive payments for notional brand name royalties to foreign parent companies.
RRT exemption for domestic sales might be OK, but not the madly perverse exemptions for foreign sales. That’s nuts, and robs all Australians, not just those missing out on taxpayer support as a consequence.
Climate adaptation will cost trillions in the coming decades, now that the rate of global heating has doubled in the last couple of years. Impacts will hit harder and faster every year now, ramping exponentially. Funding will be critical.
At this stage, Chris Bowen’s assertion that on-grid battery storage needs to expand sixfold by 2035, seems top priority, to adequately support night-time loads. It doesn’t all have to be in homes.
I offered 80 Ha for a battery farm + PV, just off the edge of the Gippsland REZ, but having to build a substation to tap into the proximate 66 kV line hammers the business case, I’m told by RELA. A 1.4 km underground link to that part of the farm wouldn’t help either. There must then be a good bit of lower hanging fruit to be picked before the increasingly essential transition gets serious, and scales up as required long term. But forced acquisition before offerings?
With Vicgov wildly ramping up rural levies & taxes, not least to pay for Melbourne’s latest $15B underground merry-go-round, I have no problem though with a little bit of city-internal effort to meet energy needs with less climate destruction. But any compulsory roof rental contract would have to cover all roof repairs.
First Law of Thermodynamics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_of_thermodynamics
“… energy can be transformed from one form to another, but can be neither created nor destroyed.”
Where energy is “generated” in one location, and transported to its end use, it is dumped into the environment as “waste heat”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_heat_island
“The main cause of the UHI effect is from the modification of land surfaces, while waste heat generated by energy usage is a secondary contributor.”
If, regardless of the source of the energy, whether ifossil, nuclear or renewable, we continue to dump our waste heat into our urban environment, there will be an increase in the “unliveability” of our cities. Increasing the amount of rooftop solar will be a net benefit in this respect. Further, large consumers of this energy, such as AI data centres should not be built within city areas.
Glen said:-
“But all that’s needed is ‘virtual’ solar – a special tariff for those who can’t access solar that behaves a lot like a 6.6kW system but without the panels. Do something useful with all those ‘smart’ meters and surplus solar!”
I already get power at off-peak rates between 10 AM and 3 PM. As a consequence I have shifted 80% of my consumption to those times.
Watts Up With That has an interesting article pointing out that rooftop solar could make large scale wind and solar redundant. While WUWT is probably not SQ’s favourite site, there could be some agreement here.
For 15th October 2025, rooftop solar apparently provided so much power that utility solar, wind, gas, & batteries were all exporting!
From about 10am to 4pm rooftop solar plus the small contribution of utility solar covered the state’s power demand, with the rest exporting.
By night it’s different – much importing of power, & even more reliance on gas, plus some wind generation.
Looking at what was OpenNEM (https://explore.openelectricity.org.au/energy/sa1/?range=1y&interval=1w&view=discrete-time&group=Detailed) over the course of a full year SA relied on 22.3% rooftop solar, 20.8% gas, 11% imports, 5.9% utility solar, 1.9% battery, and 44% wind. So rooftop isn’t yet ready to replace everything else, and doesn’t address best v worst solar days, but it’s interesting!
On a completely different note, how would nationalisation of rooftops work for those with no grid connection?
Conversely, given how many have to limit their exports, could the grid actually handle mass exporting by solar? Or is this assuming however many trillions of dollars required being invested in the grid to ensure that it can cope with every house in Australia, plus some businesses, exporting rooftop solar on a sunny day?
And how would liability be handled? Would homeowners, or landlords, need to insure the government’s solar panels or would they be uninsured? In the event of them causing a fire – unlikely but not impossible, would government be responsible for the accident, or would it be the responsibility of the property owner, akin to council trees landing on private property? If that’s the case then might insurance go up?
While it’s an interesting idea, there’s a lot of questions that would need answering first!!!
John,
Insurance is already unaffordable for the innocent unfortunates not yet forced off their low lying land by irrevocably accelerating climate degradation, eventually hostile to all but hurricane-armoured dwellings on high ground or tethered ferro-concrete barges in the MDB.
In a century the trillions will have been spent, fossil fuel use earning a jail sentence, geothermal firming universal, the entire grid underground, apart from remote self-sufficient sub-grids, and fusion expected within a decade.
As storage proliferates, at plummeting wholesale cost, solar alone amply fills the entire world’s needs, easily with geothermal firming. Solar-produced methanol is already in production, Mærsk has 11 ships able to run on it, now.
A significantly lower population, with large regions uninhabitable, will allow biodiesel for agriculture, but solar methanol will be cheaper. (So ICE will only die if efficient fuel cells are cheaper.)
Hydrogen will still be a tiny insignificant niche.
Suggestion:
To remove objections:
1) Make it an opt in / opt out – don’t force users to participate
2) Allow solar system owners to set their own price – and participate in the AEMO market (or some subset of it) as suppliers – set the price too high and nothing gets sold
Bid price to be set for a specific term – maybe 6 or 12 months to minimise administration.
To minimise administration at AEMO level, perhaps leave it to:
• energy retailers;
• local government; or
• perhaps establish an entirely separate market
This is a fraught debate. There are many ways government at all levels can lead the country by example in renewable energy.
Let’s see ministers rolling up to EV shows in EVs. Let them set mandates for solar power on their public buildings. How about they lead with policies for the property, services and staff they are directly responsible for. Trying to dictate to others before fixing their own shop is not going to work.
John, Anthony, Alex,
Is conjecture on the relative merits of conservatism/liberalism/socialism of any real substance when we have transnational mega-corporations paying negligible or zero tax, vacuuming off our resources for free for export profit, while gouging local consumers (the resource owners) for restricted access to same?
Megacorp media foments discord between our colony’s 27M inmates, while ripping them off, not least by avoiding fair tax, desperately needed to promote the vital climate-survival transition, essential for your childrens’ future, further inland, perhaps in bermed dwellings, due to wind and scorching heat.
Politicians of both polarities are corporate serfs, slavishly protecting foreign megacorp ravaging of our economy, tax-free to boot. Only the democratic-renewables vs enslaving-nuclear dichotomy separates the Tweedles.
Whether raping of property rights is communist or fascist flavoured is mere window dressing to the pillaging government-bending overlords.
Regarding this topic:
And all other Clean Energy Science and Technology matters, our federal Govt has totally lost its way, as has Solar Quotes in how it is representing itself.
Long gone are both speaking science – logic – and common sense.
I suspect that both a lack of high professional qualifications and lengthy global experience in science, technology, and demographics are missing in the commentators resumes.
All sectors are struggling and simply making it up as they go because of the same symptoms.
Lawrence Coomber
Hi Lawrence,
We love your input but perhaps you could attack the ideas instead of the people.
Rather than allude to our incompetence, use your experience to explain how it should be done.
Use your expertise to be helpful; and humble if possible.
Keeping people onside and listening is half the battle when the population is both polarised and apparently lacking critical thinking skills.
Cheers
For anybody interested, the research paper is titled “Housing affordability in the renewable energy transition: Evidence from the domestic rooftop solar panel uptake in Sydney, Australia”. The names and backgrounds of the authors are as follows:
Song Shi – Dr. Song Shi is an Associate Professor of Property Economics at the School of Built Environment, UTS. His research focuses on housing market dynamics, with interests in house price forecasting, sustainable real estate, environmental studies, and social justice, specifically in relation to housing affordability, inequity, and accessibility in urban development.
Mustapha Bangura – Mustapha is a Senior Lecturer and Researcher with expertise in Property, Finance, Economics, and Econometrics.
David Robinson – can’t find much on him, but from Linked-in: Conducted the Planning and Environmental Law course within the Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building until 2012, and continuing as guest lecturer.
This touches on our situation.
We live in a side by side duplex which may have been Strata originally. We share the same power pole. Over time this was changed to Torrens.
We’re about to spend $20k+ on installing 10kw solar panels,16kw battery, inverter, EV (62kw battery) charger and grid gateway.
Our neighbours aren’t interested. They see no financial benefit given their life expectancy.
My question is; can I offer them some of my energy? How; legally and physically?
Thanks,
John
Hi John,
Legally and technically you can’t share energy without perhaps getting both accounts to use peer to peer trading with LocalVolts?
If it’s available in your area you’d still have to pay the poles & wires people some fees for the kWhs you trade to the neighbours.
It’s not legal to cross property boundaries with mains wiring but thowing them an extension cord is simple.
Thank you Anthony.
Ideas are ALL about people and their representations, whether it be in conversation or print.
In technical blogs like Solar Quotes, the authors are representing their view – one that they consider is a reasonable one to pin their name to as “reasonable commentary” and one that would be “reasonable thinking” for Solar Quotes readers.
You have been the voice for the author Michael Bloch in this blog. How come? Great authors back themselves, even if it isn’t their original work.
They make that decision as authors to either support it by publishing it without strong condemnation at that time, or publish it for information and condemn it forcefully at the same time.
Parts of Michaels blog was incendiary to intelligent Australians.
Or have we all become soft and actually acknowledge stuff like “compulsory property acquisition” as maybe reasonable. I don’t know about you but my forebears fought and died over this very subject.
Lawrence Coomber
Hi Lawrence,
There’s probably half a dozen people who moderate the blog from time to time. No single author sees every comment but we often answer regardless.
Compulsory acquisition happens in Australia, when roads need widening for instance, because it’s considered a public good.
Like roads, sewers & medicare, the electricity grid is also a public good.
I dont know why people rail against socialism which maintains health, productivity & public wellbeing.
I dont know what combination of carrot & stick is needed, but if the government wants to reclad my leaking roof and then park it in the shade, there’s a good chance I’d let them.
What model would you favour?
Thanks Anthony.
I dont often agree with you, but despite that I detect that you might just be the type of person who has a propensity and passion for knowledge, but your inexperience and lack of high level qualifications overall, is getting in your way a bit, and maybe you have fallen into the common trap these days of worshipping false beliefs as a result. Expand your insights Anthony – there are people out there who actually know and engage in many practical ways globally, in all this stuff that you may not be aware of:
This might help
https://www.2greenenergy.com/2017/09/06/solar-wind-and-the-future-of-human-civilization/
Lawrence Coomber
Hi Lawrence,
I’m strapped for reading time at the moment but perhaps you could tell me how long did the second terrawatt of solar capacity take to deploy, copmared to the first?
Roughly speaking I think 2 terrawatts of solar at 25% capacity factor now out yields the 430GW of nuclear steam engines in the field.
I note the link you sent is dated 2017 and at least one of the commenters in the thread was denying tRump is a fascist… how’s that going?
Great read — the “use it or lend it” concept could boost rooftop solar deployment, but wide adoption depends heavily on supporting solar battery integration to store surplus energy and manage demand overnight.
Hi Portlandia,
You should send us an idea of what US residents pay for 10kWh of solar PV installed. Say Enphase vs Sigenergy vs some cheap junk.
And what does 15kWh of storage cost?
We’d be fascinated to know.