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Without the roof

What you can run in daylight

A sketch for a small portable panel. It uses the city’s average sun. It is not a quote, and it does not measure your balcony.

Who has to say yes

  • A panel you can pack up. This sketch is for a panel that charges a battery you can carry. It does not connect to the home’s wiring. A house rule can still limit what sits on a balcony or in a yard.

    Consumer Affairs Victoria ↗

  • Fixed to the building. Anything attached to the home needs the rental provider’s permission. The official page sets out which changes need consent.

    Consumer Affairs Victoria ↗

  • Connected to the home’s wiring. A licensed electrician has to connect a system to household wiring. A kit that plugs into a powerpoint to feed the home is not the panel in this sketch.

    Energy Safe Victoria ↗

What this place cannot tell you

The postcode describes the area. These are questions for the building.

  • Which way the balcony or yard faces, and what shades it
  • Whether a house rule bans things on the balcony
  • Whether the building has one electricity account for everyone
  • Whether anything would be fixed to the building or the shared roof
  • Whether the switchboard has room, which only an electrician can say

The daylight sketch

Which day

Panel size

Which way it faces

Uses to compare

On an average day in Melbourne, a 400 W panel gives about 1.3 kWh in daylight.

Facing is not set. A north-facing spot gets more of the day’s sun than a south-facing one. Shade from the building is not in this sketch.

It covers about 0.02 kWh for one charge. It covers about 0.1 kWh for a couple of hours.

Sun is the Bureau of Meteorology mean daily solar exposure at Melbourne (Olympic Park) (086338), 1990–2026, divided by 3.6 to reach kilowatt-hours per square metre. Bureau of Meteorology ↗ A 400 W panel is then reduced by 25% for angle, heat and charging. The phone, laptop, fridge and lights figures are examples, not a meter reading. Nothing after sunset is included. A postcode figure does not decide whether you can put a panel there.

CER installation records · ABS 2021 Census · Postal Area approximations

Data & methodology

About the evidence

This tool brings area-level installation records together with housing data. It describes places. Individual household tenure and solar access require separate evidence.

CER installation records

Recorded solar capacity and battery installations come from postcode records. Battery coverage starts in July 2025. Recent periods are provisional as certificate claims are completed.

ABS 2021 Census

Renter and apartment shares use the 2021 Census occupied private dwelling totals in G37. Uptake measures use the published G36 private dwelling total, which includes unoccupied dwellings and excludes non-classifiable households from its occupied count. The fixed tenure pilot uses Census dwelling records linked to SRES installation records.

Geography and council estimates

Postal Areas approximate postcodes. For cross-boundary areas, council estimates allocate recorded capacity and installations by the share of 2021 Mesh Block dwellings on each side.

Interpreting the measures

Solar capacity per dwelling is an area ratio. The two automatic rules compare five nearby housing profiles using renter and apartment shares. The alternative gives apartment share twice the weight in the squared distance. Peer comparisons describe area-level associations.

Connect an external MCP client

Use Streamable HTTP at https://loots.dwaq.me/mcp. Try compare_housing_peers with a published release ID and the same area, period and rule as Compare.

CER data ↗ABS Census data ↗Release index ↗Open the 2021 pilot →