Saving with 100% clean energy in Preston
This Preston family saves hundreds of dollars per year powering their all-electric home and vehicles with clean renewable energy
Kirsten, her partner Mark and two teenage sons have lived in their Preston home since 2006. Since then they’ve transformed it from a Depression-era no-frills California bungalow with gas hot water, heating and cooking to an all-electric, energy efficient home.
"We have always been concerned about the climate crisis and are keen to minimise our household fossil fuel use. When we bought the house, the only things we really spent money on were essential maintenance and energy efficiency upgrades such as ceiling and under floor insulation, and replacing windows with uPVC double glazed windows – they are a wonderful way to improve thermal efficiency, and sound insulation. Highly recommend," Kirsten says.
Once they had the money to renovate in 2016, they installed a 10kW solar system – as large as they could manage – switched their appliances to all-electric, and focused on making the house as well sealed and insulated as they could. Originally they retained their gas ducted heating, but "once we’d moved back in we realised that with the huge improvements to insulation we actually didn’t need the gas system at all and soon after had it removed and the gas disconnected."
As a result they are now generating much more electricity than they use, and are in credit around $600—800 per year on their electricity bills.
They are making the most of their extra solar power: charging their electric whipper snipper and lawnmower and powering their electric bikes. They recently purchased a second-hand Nissan Leaf to replace their petrol car: ‘so smooth, quiet and fun’ – and free to run!
When asked what her favourite appliance is, Kirsten has trouble deciding between the induction cooktop, the electric oven, and their super-efficient split system which heats their living space in 10 mins on a cold morning. And the solar panels drive everything: "generating our own solar is an extra dream especially on a really hot day when we’re producing heaps of power and we want to turn on the air con – we can do it guilt-free!"
The best thing about going all-electric? "Knowing our domestic needs are not contributing to the demand for gas."
Kirsten's advice
My advice is to grab the low hanging fruit like insulation and other energy efficiency options as you can afford to. You definitely don’t need to wait until you’re doing a big renovation to make meaningful changes to the way your house works.
Using a thermal camera to identify where heat is getting in or escaping is super helpful (you can borrow one from Darebin Libraries). Draft stoppers and curtains really do make a big difference, as does upgrading appliances to efficient electric ones when you can afford to or when your current ones die.
Our strong advice to anyone considering getting solar panels is to get as many as you can afford and cover as much of your roof as you can. We have the majority of panels facing north but also some facing east and some west which ensures a longer period of generation each day.
Find out more
Follow the six steps to an all-electric home.