Helcro Solar, a Melbourne-based solar and electrical contractor, has expanded its commercial division to take on large-scale sites of 100kW and above, ahead of a 1 January 2027 rule that will require every new commercial building in Victoria to be built all-electric.
The company holds a Victorian electrical contractor licence alongside its solar accreditation, giving it scope to handle both the supply and switchboard work an all-electric building needs and the rooftop system that offsets it.
The incoming rule applies to new commercial buildings that require a planning permit, including commercial kitchens. Industrial and agricultural buildings are exempt, and existing commercial premises will not be required to retrofit.
For everyone else, a building that would once have run its cooking, hot water and space heating on gas will now draw all of that load through the electricity meter.
The cost of that shift is not only measured in kilowatt hours.
Commercial electricity tariffs carry a demand charge set by a site’s single highest peak draw, meaning one busy afternoon can re-price a building’s electricity costs for the entire year, even if that load never repeats.
Electrifying cooking, heating and hot water tends to raise that peak.
On some sites, the shift also tests the capacity of the existing grid connection, where drawing more power than the connection can supply risks outages on the premises.
Solar and battery systems can reduce that maximum draw rather than simply offsetting overall consumption, a distinction that can move a site onto a lower tariff altogether.
Helcro Solar has modelled tariff reductions worth around $30,000 a year on a single site.
The underlying economics are stronger again for businesses that use power as it is generated, offsetting consumption at the commercial rate of 25 to 30 cents per kilowatt hour rather than exporting surplus power for a fraction of that return.
The company puts typical payback periods at three to four years and savings at 40 to 70 per cent, with the heaviest daytime users, including fabricators, manufacturers, cold storage operators and logistics businesses, sitting at the stronger end of both ranges.
“A building’s biggest half hour of the year sets what it pays for the other 17,000,” said Luke Rose, Director of Helcro Solar.
Rose said most operators only discover the impact of that peak after the fact, and that the decision to offset it through rooftop generation is typically made at the drawing stage, well before a building is occupied.
Helcro Solar models each site against years of its own metered usage data across hundreds of possible system configurations before quoting, optimising for whichever outcome a client is after, whether that is the fastest payback, the highest overall return or the lowest upfront cost.
Site assessments are carried out by a qualified A-grade electrician rather than a salesperson, and installations use penetration-less clamp mounting systems that avoid drilling into the roof.
With the all-electric mandate now a little over a year away, Helcro Solar’s expanded commercial arm positions the company to serve developers and business owners navigating both the electrical and solar sides of the transition under a single licence.
