Home Electrification

Electrifying your home from renewable energy sources has a huge range of benefits, including that it challenges the power of fossil fuel companies and puts pressure on governments to go much bolder on emissions reduction programs

By Fraser Maywood, an independent energy consultant, Electrify 6158 member and chair at Sustainable Energy Now

Some of you will have attended Rewiring Australia’s Electrify Everything WA event held on March 20^th 2024. The level of community interest in hearing from Saul Griffiths on home electrification was huge – the venue Hackett Hall, WA Museum Boola Bardip was sold out twice as more seats were added.

Community groups aimed at home electrification are springing up all around the country, exchanging information and community engagement ideas. Many of these groups are under Rewiring Australia’s “electrify suburb” campaign where members can freely access information for non-commercial use. WA groups include Electrify the Valley, Electrify Bayswater and the group I’m a member of ‒ Electrify 6158.

The amount of information available online for home electrification, including for apartments and rentals, has exploded in the past year. Rewiring Australia provides comprehensive and well researched information. Tim Forcey is an energy auditor based in Melbourne and runs a very popular Facebook page and has recently published “My Efficient Electric Home Handbook, How to slash your energy bills, protect your health & save the planet” – available from Booktopia. Saul’s book the “The Big Switch” covers home electrification and the bigger picture on emissions reduction.

The ‘New Energy Tech’ website provides a number of well written consumer style guides that can be downloaded.

The various facets of home electrification are highlighted in the image above and the rationale for investing in home electrification are universally recognised as:

1. Save on energy bills – replace appliances when they fall due for replacement;
2. Improve health – burning stuff in the home impacts air quality and your health;
3. Reduce domestic emissions – doing your bit for the environment.

What is not talked about much is that home electrification helps reduce your ties with the fossil fuel industry and undermines their social licence. It is a small but deliberate political act that provides a disproportional amount of personal satisfaction. Falling domestic gas demand undermines the rationale for large scale gas developments such as Scarborough, Browse, Barossa.

Whilst the WA state government is “committed to the clean energy transition”, they don’t currently feel they have the political capital to take the necessary bold steps. They have announced the vision by way of the ‘SWIS demand assessment’ and have provided some relatively small incremental funding, including to Western Power to complete essential and long-awaited transmission upgrades. However, the prevailing sentiment in Cabinet appears to be a conservative one: don’t rock the boat and be a big target by announcing a significant social investment in state owned infrastructure to enable the transition to take place in a timely fashion. Your home electrification and related community activism do get noticed and help to demonstrate to government that there is broad community support for bold action – governments and large corporations tend to follow public opinion rather than shape it.

Your home electrification journey will depend on your unique circumstances. Joining a community group (or starting one), getting educated and developing a timeline of electrification milestones (i.e. target dates for installing rooftop solar, hot water heat pump, space heating, induction cooktop, electric transport options – EV or e-bike, improving energy efficiency) is a useful way of getting into action.

Community groups can provide technical support and the all-important local referral network to answer the key questions: “who did you use”, “are you happy with them” and the clincher “would you recommend them to a friend”.

Electrify 6158 is hosting a free community event on the 6^th July – book via Humanitix.

Header photo: Rewiring Australia’s Electrify Everything WA event held on March 20^th 2024. Saul Griffiths third from left. _{Credit: Connor Warn}

_{[Opinions expressed are those of the author and not official policy of Greens WA nor those of Sustainable Energy Now]}