Community housing tenants go solar
18 May 2025
The completion of this $28,000 community solar project will be one of the highlights of our 2025… and we can confidently say that even though we’re not even halfway through the year!
We have project managed and co-funded the installation of rooftop solar systems for four community housing tenants in the suburbs of Croydon Park, Lewisham, Marrickville, and Tempe.
The tenants live in homes managed by Metro Community Housing, the Newtown-based community housing provider.
Inner West Community Energy paid for half the project while Metro paid for the other half. There’s a 5.28kW system on a house in Lily St, Croydon Park, a 6.6 kilowatt system on a house in Newington Rd, Marrickville, a 6.6kW system on a house in Thomas St, Lewisham, and a 6.6kW system on a house in Barden St, Tempe.
“I’m very excited about having solar!” Lewisham tenant Alycia told us. “I think it will mean obviously saving financial stresses in the house. It will provide extra funds, I guess, for different family activities. If the kids want to do something, we don’t have to stress quite so much about it.
Pictured: Metro asset manager Tracey, Metro tenant Alycia, and IWCE volunteer Jasper
“We are very lucky. I am very, very surprised, and I'm very grateful.”
Alycia has four school age kids in the house with her partner Steve, so her power bills are significant. We predict the system on her house will cut her annual power bill from $2800 to around $1100, saving her $1700 a year.
IWCE is well aware that tenants are being left behind in the transition to 100% renewables.
We can’t do much about creating government policies to help tenants, so in this case we did what we could, which was to project manage and jointly pay for four solar systems donated to four Inner West tenants.”
Metro’s chair, Enda O’Callaghan, said: "With the increasing challenges of cost-of-living experienced by our tenants, solar panels help reduce ongoing household energy costs whilst allowing us to work towards reducing our carbon footprint".
Special thanks to IWCE volunteer Jasper Webster for running the project on our behalf.