Common-Area Load: The Simplest Place to Start With Rooftop Solar

The overlooked line item

Every multifamily property and HOA pays a common-area electric bill: corridor lighting, elevators, pumps, laundry, gates, cameras, irrigation controllers, and increasingly EV chargers. On a 100-unit property that bill often runs $2,500–$6,000 a month.

Why it's the easiest starting point

• One meter, one account. No resident onboarding, no billing platform, no collections.
• Daytime load. Corridor lighting, pumps, and elevators run when the sun is up, so almost every kilowatt-hour is consumed on-site at full retail value rather than exported at a lower rate.
• No lease changes. You are reducing an operating expense you already control.

What it's worth

A 60 kW array covering common-area load typically eliminates 70–90% of that bill. At $4,000 a month, that is roughly $40,000 of annual expense reduction — and expense reduction flows to NOI exactly like revenue does.

When to expand to resident billing

Once the common-area system is producing and metered, adding resident-facing capacity is an incremental step rather than a new project: same interconnection, same monitoring, same relationships. Most owners layer it in at month 6–12.

Practical first move

Pull twelve months of common-area statements and the roof plan. Those two documents are enough to size a first phase and put a number on it.

Want to see what your roof could earn? Estimate your NOI lift or talk to our team.