Australia is set to see its first "solar suburb" with Denman Prospect in Canberra after its developers introduced a minimum solar requirement for each residence.

Located close to Canberra’s CBD and bordered by the Molonglo River and the National Arboretum, Denman Prospect is a new suburb that will eventually contain around 4,000 residences. Each dwelling is required to have a three kilowatt system capable of generating approximately 4,146 kilowatt hours of energy each year, which equals about half of the energy used by an average Australian household.

Capital Estate Developments managing director Stephen Byron said that the solar systems for the first 350 houses in the suburb have been purchased in bulk, which lowers the price for individual residents. Capital Estate Developments is behind stage one of the project. The first pieces of land were auctioned on October 17. The second and third stages of the suburb are still being developed by the Land Development Agency.

Denman Prospect is also the first Australian suburb to commit to the Homes for Homes initiative, an affordable and social housing scheme that encourages both developers and individual home owners to make a tax-deductible donation of 0.1 percent of the sale price of a property. A proportion of the proceeds from each land sale in Denman Prospect will go towards a fund for affordable housing started by not-for-profit social enterprise The Big Issue.