Any advice on adding solar to a multi-unit apartment building?
Hi there. I'm wondering if there are any landlords here who have had experience installing solar on their apartment buildings.
We own a 4-unit apartment building in Oakland, and we want to do the right thing and install solar panels to help reduce the building's energy use, but we're struggling with how to fairly do that, as the tenants each have their own PG&E account and are responsible for their own electricity/gas consumption. I gather that landlords are prohibited from charging tenants for actual electricity or gas usage. Thus, why buildings typically have multiple meters and each tenant is obliged to set up their own PG&E account.
At any rate, I'd love to have a brief chat with anyone here who has managed to install solar on their apartment building. And I'd be particularly keen to understand how they recouped the cost of the install. Did they simply raise the rent on everyone in order to finance the $40k-$50k required for the upgrade? Did they redraft lease agreements and take on responsibility for all gas/electric usage in their building? If so, did they oblige tenants to pay some additional fee based on actual usage? We want to be fair and equitable, but we also can't afford to foot these costs on our own.
Thanks for any and all suggestions!
Parent Replies
Thanks for trying to do the right thing. Youre not the only person with these questions. I’m very interested to see the responses because I’m a tenant and I wish that my landlady would have solar installed on our 7-unit building. Alternatively, I wish that tenants could get financing (preferably up-front) or rebates for solar panel electric vehicle charger installation. Renters currently have cable and fiber-optic internet infrastructure connected to their individual units. Could one or more solar panels be connected to a specific unit and PG&E account? Many of us in the Bay Area are renters but it seems like only people who are homeowners and also able to spend money and then wait for a rebate can get solar panels and/or electric vehicle charging stations.
Not really an answer to your question, but one consideration is that in northern California the most useful thing you can do environmentally is to switch everything to electric -- stoves, space heating, water heating. Our grid is fairly clean already, and your tenants have the option to choose an all-renewables mix (I would think you could also give them a rebate for choosing that, if you wanted). Switching to electric doesn't create the same kind of issues in terms of shifting a cost from tenants to landlord, though of course it's still $$$ and you have to figure out how to handle the cost of the improvements.