First women-only rooftop solar project powers up in Victoria, sets higher bar for industry

It’s common to see a group of blokes working away on a rooftop solar installation, but all-women? Not likely. 

That’s thanks to a combination of a hyper competitive industry with the dearth of support for women to learn relevant trades, says Australian Women in Solar Energy (AWISE) cofounder Lily Pekjic.

And it’s a reason why the installation of a 96kW solar system at an Officeworks in north-eastern Melbourne suburb of Bundoora is ground breaking: It’s been led, designed, installed and even funded solely by women.

“Someone has recognised the opportunity for women to be involved and recognised that it’s not common,” Pekjic told Renew Economy.

“[We’ve been] proactive but there’s women in all sorts of roles here, we’ve got engineers, project managers, designers, store managers who are women. It’s not just one, it’s a whole complexity of roles.”

The idea came from equipment provider Smart Commercial Solar, which wanted to see if such a team could be put together, despite women only making up 23 per cent of the solar workforce and 3.5 per cent in electrical trades. 

But contrary to the idea that it’s impossible to find a tradie, let alone a female tradie, in these traditionally male-only sectors, it only took AWISE a week to source all of the talent needed to make the project happen.

“We mean everyone. At the client, at Smart, at our installation partner (Sydney Solar and Battery). The core group is eight women, three from Smart Commercial Solar, two from AWISE including Lily, and three from Officeworks,” says Smart Commercial Solar marketing head Lauren Hamilton. 

The 96kW array is funded under a Power Purchase Agreement which itself is linked to a woman investor, found by ethical investment organisation Clear Sky Solar Investments.

The vibe of working with an all-women team was different too, Pekjic says. 

“There’s just a lot of excitement that we’re coming together to work together,” she says.

“There’s a bigger purpose behind this so it’s not just a commercial exchange, there’s a sense of community and building women, supporting women. More than a job or a project.”

The project was started in December last year and installation happened in February.

Cut throat industry

But while the project highlighted that women are out there who can handle all aspects of a solar project, the industry itself is not built for nurturing new talent, especially women.

Pekjic believes quotas could solve the opportunity problem: the Officeworks project saw people coming forward to ask if their female engineers could participate to “get hands-on experience”, because they hadn’t had an opportunity to teach them in-house.

A quota within a contract stipulating a minimum number of women in a team might encourage companies to support the women they have, better. 

But Pekjic is frustrated with an industry that offers no time to train people, because the high volume, short-term nature of projects don’t provide enough consistency or stability to teach then keep people in the sector.

“We need to really start thinking about what we have in place. Are we set up to invest and train people? It’s one thing to hire people but retention is a huge problem in this industry,” she says.

“Our initial goal [at AWISE] was to bring more women in the solar industry together, but we’ve noticed that it’s very unsupported for women in the trades field. It’s almost nonexistent.”

Huge number of jobs coming in solar

Bringing women into the renewables sector is becoming mission critical as skills shortages loom. 

The country will need “two million workers in building and engineering trades by 2050 to prepare Australia’s energy grid and industrial base for net zero”, said a Jobs and Skills Australia report in 2023.

That report put the number of extra electricians alone at 32,000 more people in this trade by 2030 and 84,000 by 2050 – numbers which just using men alone won’t achieve. 

A tradie workforce of mainly older people as well as slow growth in people finishing Vocational Education and Training (VET) courses means there is a growing supply gap of people needed in the renewables sector, showed an analysis from the Australian Energy Council last year. 

Pekjic says governments and large corporations will need to come to the party to train women and encourage them to stay in the “cut throat” solar sector. 

“I’ve had a few female tradie apprentices that have gone on to other companies. I’ve had other women doing designing, logistics, admin. I’d say 75 per cent [of my staff] are women but not necessarily in the trade itself. It’s a hard industry to find someone to fit into this lifestyle, especially if they have kids,” she says.

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