Billyard Gardens

Published
A tall brick apartment building with multiple windows under a blue sky. White decorative barriers in the foreground. Distant cityscape in the background.

Billyard Gardens is a residential building in Elizabeth Bay consisting of 18 apartments.

The building owners received a City of Sydney grant for a NABERS rating and an energy action plan through which several upgrades were identified.

What they did

  • Switched to 100% GreenPower electricity plan for common areas
  • Electric vehicle feasibility study

Results

  • Saving $600 a year in electricity costs
  • The electric vehicle study revealed the building’s electrical capacity, allowing the strata committee to safely enable hardware for apartment owners to install their own charging facilities
  • After passing a by-law for electric vehicles, 3 owners now have their own chargers

Lessons

  • Through the grant process, Billyard Gardens learnt it could get a 100% GreenPower electricity plan cheaper than a bulk bill from an energy company.
  • It also learnt what parts of the building use the most energy and the owners are planning to upgrade lights and washing machines.

“The amount of work we can do to decrease our environmental impact as an old building is limited. Switching to offsite renewable electricity was so advantageous both in terms of sustainability and financial objectives. The grant allowed us to understand the complexity of the issues and how to navigate through them.”

– Robert, strata committee member