Solar panels on a condo roof: what the meeting must decide

The roof is available, the exposure is good, and the project still collapses. Almost always for the same reason.

The subject reaches almost every building: a well-exposed roof, rising electricity bills for the common areas, an installer knocking. Everyone likes the principle at the meeting. Then the project stalls, and it rarely stalls on the technical side.

What blocks it is the sequence of decisions: who invests, who consumes the electricity produced, what happens to the waterproofing, and what becomes of the installation in twenty years. A board that asks those four questions in the right order gets the file through.

Three set-ups, three logics

• The association invests and consumes: the electricity feeds the common areas — lift, lighting, ventilation. The saving lands directly on the charges.
• The association invests and exports the surplus, or all of it, to a buyer: the income goes to the association.
• Collective self-consumption: production is shared between participating flats, which requires its own organisation and framework.
• The association makes its roof available to a third party who invests: no outlay, but a long commitment on a common structure.

The last set-up closely resembles a rooftop antenna: a long lease, to be examined with the same rigour.

The question that decides everything: the roof

Installing panels on end-of-life waterproofing is the surest way to pay twice. A later renewal will require removing and refitting the installation, at a cost bearing no relation to the original works.

The rule is simple: if the roof must be renewed within ten years, solar is decided at the same time, not before. See roof and waterproofing and the multi-year works plan.

What gets voted

Installing panels alters the common areas and therefore goes to the general meeting. The applicable majority depends on the exact nature of the operation and its financial structure: an installation serving the common areas does not follow the same regime as making the roof available to a third party.

Have the manager confirm the regime before drafting, and draft completely: capacity, location, contractor, amount, schedule. A vague resolution will be amended in the room, which loses the postal votes.

Costing it honestly

• Actual common-area consumption over three years — that sizes the installation, not the available roof area.
• Full cost: equipment, installation, connection, protections, any waterproofing work.
• Maintenance and cleaning costs, routinely absent from simulations.
• Inverter life, markedly shorter than panel life.
• Available grants, to be applied for before work starts.

The penultimate point is what derails fifteen-year projections. Funding is then presented like any investment: see funding major works.

What the board can do now

Two actions prepare the file without committing the building: record the common-area electricity consumption over three years, and establish the roof’s real condition. Together they turn a discussion of opinion into a documented decision.

They fit the approach described in the steps of an energy renovation and what the collective energy assessment reveals.

Solar is not sized on the roof area available, but on what the building actually consumes.

Prepare the file with CoproHarmony

CoproHarmony gathers quotes, consumption readings, meeting decisions and roof photographs in one space, retrievable years later. Create your free space.