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The Tassie Solar Man
George Auchterlonie is “The Tassie Solar Man” endeavours to bring local and interstate topics relative to the Solar Industry, for peers and the public alike.
Hear from George as he interviews stalwarts in the industry helping to bring informative information, topical chats and light hearted banter as he rides what is know as….the solar coaster.
The Tassie Solar Man
#6 Will a Battery Slash Your Power Bills, or Will the 1%ers Save You More?
In this episode of The Tassie Solar Man, we sit down with Homeowner Chris to explore his electrifying journey toward energy efficiency in his southern Tasmanian home.
From solar hot water to full PV systems, Chris shares how his solar setup has evolved over the years—and why he’s taken a holistic approach to home energy efficiency. We also dive into the big question: Is a home battery really worth it for him?
Tune in as Chris and George break down the practicalities, the small changes that add up, and how the 1% improvements can lead to big savings over time.
The Tassie Solar Man podcast is hosted by George Auchterlonie. It's a casual conversation that shouldn't be taken as business, financial or legal advice.
Welcome back to the Tassie Solar Man. My name's George Octaloni. We're going to have what we call a homeowner edition series. This is a candidate interview with homeowners that have either been our clients over the years or potentially other clients in Tasmania that have either installed solar or solar hot water, electric vehicles. And it's going to be aimed more so at the listeners out there, the mums and dads that are considering going down the path of electrification of their homes, more so than the industry, which is what we tend to sort of get caught up in a little bit, and the other podcasts are industry-based. So this is a little bit of a new thing, and we're going to give it a go. I'm lucky enough to be joined today by Chris. Welcome to the podcast, Chris. Thanks, George. Lovely to have you again and lovely to see you again. Well, it's always good to see you, George. No, no. When I thought of this uh homeowners edition, I thought you would be the perfect person to get on to kickstart this off, and uh you've embraced electrification right across your home. It's one thing to just put solar panels on the roof, but you've gone down the path uh well, you you started with hot water. Correct. Yep, and then you engaged uh my business back in 2012. I think we were talking off off that's correct. Yep. Photovoltaes, photovoltaics. Back then the the panel size were let me have a look. You've you've around six kilowatts, I believe. Six kilowatts. And what were the panels? I this I really liked when I when you bought this out. Uh your original quote. My original handwritten quote. For the listeners. Yeah, for the listeners. It's all done digitally now. 250 watt Trina is I think from memory. Yep. 24 panels, six kilowatts. 24 panels, six kilowatts, nine thousand and thirty-six dollars out of pocket expense. Wow. That's correct. Yeah. So unfortunately I have to tell you that the price has come down a lot since then. Oh, wow. And the technology's gone up.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, well, I've made the money back and uh they paid themselves off pretty quickly, so I'm happy.
SPEAKER_01:You would have well and truly paid off because back then the feed-in tariff was quite high, wasn't it?
SPEAKER_03:We did have a feed-in tariff that was uh generous and uh uh certainly the opposite of what it is today, which isn't generous by any means.
SPEAKER_01:No, it's not. It's it sits at around eight cents, eight point five cents across give or take, some of the retailers. But um what I've what I've noticed, you know, being just under 15 years in the industry, is when we put your solar on, everyone was rushing because of the um to get in on the 28 cents for the feeding tariff, and then overnight Aurora, which was our only retailer in Tasmania then dropped it overnight to five and a half cents. That's correct. So the phone stopped ringing, everyone thought solar was too expensive and a waste of money, who'd do it? So yeah, I mean our business we basically packed the tools up for a couple of years, metaphorically, um, before things started to come down in price. A lot of the gear and the solar panels as China continued to manufacture and everything got cheaper in our um in our space, uh it became more viable. The feed-in tariff did sneak back up, it sort of got up to around the 13 cents, but now it sort of has dropped back. Yes. But we are doing better than a lot of states.
SPEAKER_03:We are. We certainly are.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I think New South Wales now actually have a sun tax.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, well, there's talking about coming right in across uh the country. But um you talk about feed-in tariff, it now isn't the uh prime driver to fit solar. It's it's a consideration, but certainly I don't think is the prime driver.
SPEAKER_01:No, it's not, and and we aren't getting that sort of feedback too from our clients and our uh potential clients with our quotes that oh we're not getting anything for our feed inwards. It's not about making money, it's about using that energy wisely.
SPEAKER_03:So if you're producing excess solar, uh try not to feed it back and try and use it yourself.
SPEAKER_01:That's that's exactly right. And that's what we want to talk about today because there's a lot of a lot of myths and a lot of misconceptions, mistruths in our industry, um, all around the country, um, but also in in Hobart and Tasmania. We still have the well, one issue is the pressure salesman that's still doing the door knocking from some companies. I don't know whether you've been approached, maybe they see the solar before they come up the driveway.
SPEAKER_03:But um I had one person approach me and uh they were going back down the driveway pretty quickly.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, look. We he we're here all the time, and and to be honest, it's it's really disappointing in that we still see that. That was supposed to have been stamped out with some of these um businesses joining Net CC, which for those listeners is a another body and another layer of of consumer protection, and and our business is one of those. But also some of these businesses that are door knocking still are. So I'm not sure where the consumer protection is. It's it's it's words for me, it doesn't sit true. But most people can smell a rat if they're pressured into signing something on the dotted line today. Yes, most people can go, well, hang on a minute, pump the brakes here, there's there's something's going on, I'd say.
SPEAKER_03:Uh yeah, but there are still people being called out there, vulnerable people, uh people that are older, or English might be their second language, and uh it's still a little bit of an issue.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. So we want to unpack that a little bit and talk a bit later in the podcast about some of those things to look out for. I'm interested in your story, and the listeners will be interested in your story and your journey into electrification. If you want to give us a really brief out outlay on your decisions and and what drove you from well, we spoke about your you know double insulating your windows and all the other things, not just solar, and and why it's important to have a holistic approach to energy.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, well, look, uh I suppose my journey began back in uh the mid-2000s, I suppose, and I was looking at ways to try and make my house more energy efficient as a starting point. Uh and that was things like you know, how much insulation, if any, was in the roof, um how much energy uh or heat was I losing out of windows, because that's where most of our heat is lost. 100%. Um, and certainly being in Tasmania, you want to keep your houses as warm as possible during those winter months. Obviously, hot water usage was uh another area that uh I looked at immediately because it it was a pretty big part of our bill. So I suppose my journey began at how could I make my house more energy efficient? And that is, you know, doing uh a quick audit around drafts, uh shutting doors of rooms that you're not using. What was your insulation like in the roof? It was okay, but it was uh blow-wind, so we topped that up a bit and put the maximum we could in the roof and made sure that it was distributed as as best as possible up there. We're lucky enough to have a house where there's uh not many holes in the ceiling. Uh obviously there's down lights. Uh correct. So there's no downlights. Um there's obviously three fans in this house, one in the kitchen and one in each bathroom, which is two bathrooms. So we put the draft stoppers over the top of those holes, the ones with the flaps. So you turn the fan on and the flaps open, you turn the fan off and uh the flaps closed. Yeah. They're not 100% efficient, but they're they're better than nothing. It all helps, doesn't it? Absolutely. And uh every door, internal door, I put draft stopping material around the doors uh and on the bottom of the doors to stop those drafts.
SPEAKER_01:Um I'm really interested to um for you to talk to the listeners about what you've done with your windows because you didn't rip them out and actually replace them with double glazing. That's that's a big cost.
SPEAKER_03:But yeah, well, all of this I think anybody that's in this position where they're trying to make their house more energy efficient has to get the balance right because you could spend$30,000 or$40,000 making your house energy efficient, but your energy bills would never be$30 or$40,000 in the the the years you have remaining. So I looked at the the single glaze windows in this house, which are three mil, and thought if I took every single window out and replaced them with double glazing, I'd be up for a huge amount of money. So I researched on the internet for quite some time and I eventually found uh a double glazing method where you use three mil optical grade acrylic, you have those pieces of acrylic cut to size, you then go out and purchase an A and B magnetic strip, and you put the A magnetic strip on the perspex, you put the B magnetic strip uh on the window frame, and basically just uh then put the um optical grade acrylic on the window frame. Straight on. And I'm lucky I've got wooden uh uh window frames here, which are square, um, and and and I could easily do it. So I did the whole house myself. And they look great? Well, you wouldn't know they were there because they're an optical grade um acrylic. You wouldn't know they're there. I've got brown magnets which match the uh the brown wood. And all up back in the day, that would have been 2008, probably cost me under a thousand dollars to double grade every single window and door and door in this house.
SPEAKER_01:Wow. And you did a lot of that yourself, though.
SPEAKER_03:I did it all myself. Uh a bit of a handyman. I can uh do small jobs like that. The important thing is to get all the measurements right. Now, I did it because we used to have a wood heater in this house, and the wood heater was a freestanding wood heater, and in winter you could basically have the doors open uh in this house and still be in shorts and t-shirt, it'd be 25, 30 degrees in this room.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:When I took that wood heater out and put a heat pump in, I thought, what have I done? I couldn't get the heat pump to operate at 19 or 20 degrees and hold it. So I could see straight away that all that um well quite a lot of that uh heat was going out through the windows. Yeah, and I needed to do something very quickly. And as soon as I did the double glazing in this room um, straight away, by closing the hallway door, I was able to get 20 degrees easily with the heat pump and hold it there uh without the thermostat kicking in for 20, 30 minutes.
SPEAKER_01:And that was before you improved your insulation in the in the ceiling? That was at the same time. Same time. So a combined effort for windows insulation.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Ironically, do you know wood heaters they pump out probably 20 to 30 kilowatts of energy? People go, well, put it six kilowatt heat pump in there.
SPEAKER_03:Well, that's what I did. I went from 20 or 30 kilowatts down to six kilowatts and I thought, what have I done?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, but you're not buying wood anymore.
SPEAKER_03:Well, I'm not moving six tonnes of wood a year with the associated um mice and uh spiders and mess.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:And polluting the atmosphere.
SPEAKER_01:Look, everyone loves a wood heater. I love a wood heater, so do I, but I've got both at home. I've got a wood heater that we can light on special occasions when we want to feel that nice glow of the red coals and have a nice glass of red. But that's probably only been used three or four times this winter.
SPEAKER_03:And George, that comes at a cost if you live somewhere like Lanceston where uh they can't disperse that wood heat smoke up uh in that area, you've got people with chronic health issues uh that aren't going to going to get any better, they're going to actually get worse.
SPEAKER_01:That's a really good point. Yeah, yeah. Because that that's been a big thing. I mean, I remember it not so much in the in the last few years, and I guess that swings with the state governments, but they were talking about giving incentives for homeowners in Lanceston to rip out their wood heaters. Well they did. They did, did they? Yeah, okay. And and replace them with eat pumps.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, but over time. Well, well, I I I don't know either, but over time people have obviously put wood eaters back into their homes.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Because there's no disincentive not to.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's right. And there's no there's no wood heater policeman, so to speak, keeping an eye on all this sort of stuff. So okay, so you've you've sorted your windows out, you've sorted out your insulation. Obviously, wall insulation is a lot harder to deal with for people that have got the older homes. I mean, I know there are methods of putting insulation into walls, but it's not really a thing. And it's the big ticket item is the ceiling because you know heat rises and that's what we need to sort out. If we can't get the walls right at the right price, it's probably not worth it.
SPEAKER_03:Well, interestingly, I looked and researched as much as I could into um I've got a brick veneer home, and uh it's cost prohibitive. It's just I can't I couldn't go down that pathway.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, and I don't think most people do. I yeah, I don't think it's really a thing. Okay, so moving then forward, you you've done that, and then we thought, okay, what's another big ticket energy user in the home, and that's obviously hot water.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, well, back in 2008, um I could easily see through all the research that you one of the biggest energy users in the home is is hot water. I think around that time the existing uh resistive hot water cylinder was pretty old, so I knew it was going to need to be replaced at some point. So I just uh did some research and obviously back in 2008 heat pump technology well I hadn't heard of it, and um I don't know if it existed or not, but certainly solar hot water was solar hot water was big, it was yeah now even in Tassie uh so eventually put uh solar hot water um up on the roof uh with the tank on the roof.
SPEAKER_01:And I remember, I can clearly remember because we've known each other a long time. I can clearly remember when you were modelling the angles of the sun and making that frame up to be exactly true north and true north degrees. Yes, ridiculous.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I didn't need to do that. In hindsight. That's correct. I didn't need to do that. But and the other thing, of course, you might have remembered it took uh six fellow co-workers to lift that cylinder up onto that frame, which is just crazy.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, look, but but I look back in the industry that that I've obviously been in and everything was up on tilts, 42 degrees true north, because that was the optimum for generation. And when you're 28 cents in, 28 cents out, the grid your battery, it didn't matter when you made all that power because you could draw it back in at the same price. Yes, so it wasn't an issue. So but now there's rules, well, apart from it looking a bit ordinary up on the tilt frames, there's rules now in in Tasmania, uh, whether we like it or not, you've got to get a building permit from the council to put them on frames. So we're I'd say one in 20 of our installations now are up on tilts, and that also is because panels uh more efficient, yeah, more efficient and probably a quarter of the price that they were back then.
SPEAKER_03:Yep.
SPEAKER_01:Um so okay, so you got your hot water sorted and then you approached our business Rest Energy to put on solar.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, well that was the next natural step.
SPEAKER_01:Um power needed to be the next thing, and uh I tried to source the best in the business, which is your I think you did I think you came to the right business, right person, I hope. Uh I I I still get a smile when I walk past customers' um inverters and I see the the solar rivers on the on the wall still functioning. Yours are probably one of the few out there that we installed back in the day that are still going. You've obviously you've nurtured them. I mean, they're on the south facing wall of the house, they're out of the sun. Correct. Uh, and they're still ticking along. I I wouldn't touch them, or you'd be probably up for a new inverter. Uh look, I I'm very happy they're still working. Uh surprised, but very happy. Yes. No, look, I'm I I'd be happy and look, while it we're in the industry of renewables, so why replace it until you have to? Just keep just keep going.
SPEAKER_03:As we were talking about earlier, I love it when the sun comes out and they hum and you can hear them producing one hell of a lot of power.
SPEAKER_01:That hum is another moment closer to it not humming. But that's okay. That's okay. I think back then they had a five-year warranty. When did we do the installation? 20 2012?
SPEAKER_03:Well, Aurora turned it on 2012.
SPEAKER_01:2011, maybe at the end of 2011. So you've had a good run. You've had a really good run. I had. Okay, so this this sort of uh to opening up to people out there that have already got solar um of of similar vintage, what we're sort of thinking now, and what we're finding in in our um quotation process is people want more solar or they want a battery. Yes, they want battery attachment because of the cheaper home batteries program. So we're finding that properties like yourselves and many others out there don't have enough PV generation on the on the roof to support decent batteries. Correct. Beware listeners, beware, beware. We've banged on about it, and all the other podcasts have as well that the sharks out there that will sell you a 30 kilowatt hour battery when you've got five or six kilowatts on your roof, run a mile, especially in Tasmania, because we don't have the VPP option. Where and what that that's a virtual power plant, what that means uh is the people, the homeowners with the battery have the ability then to sell to a third party, such as Amber, there's lots of them out there, and get a high price for their excess. So they might buy it in at the off-peat rate, then sell it. But none of that exists in Tasmania. Whether it does in the future, who knows?
SPEAKER_03:And we haven't got uh some of the cheap uh overnight uh feed-in uh uh sorry, not feed in, but cheap overnight tariffs that some of the uh mainlanders have to run EVs or to pop up batteries.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I mean I can't help but but think of um Carl Jensen on just another solar podcast, and he loves to talk about how he has two hours every day of free power. Yes. And he charges his Teslas up, he runs all the heating, he gets the house up to 28 degrees, the m the mains must be nearly glowing by the end of those two hours. But good on him. I mean that's that's the way it works, and it's obviously in in the middle of the day when solar's pumping and the trade valley are smashing out plenty of coal fired power and um and they're encouraged to use it at the moment. That's right. But we don't have any of that in Tasmania, so we're don't get sucked into buying a battery or someone selling you a battery that's not bespoke for your installation or your home.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, well that that that's correct. And uh and of course, uh the other side of this is consider the battery, but also consider your solar panel capacity as well. I think you know, if I had my time again, I probably would have had double the capacity on the roof that I currently have. Trying to future proof it, for example, is is something I think you need to think about. You need to think about not just powering your home, but are you going to get a car in the future that you need to charge? Are you going to add a battery to it? And as you said, with a small capacity, smaller solar panel capacity, you might not be able to do that.
SPEAKER_01:Well, that's right. A lot of people don't have the real estate on the on the roof to put um either extra arrays up there or or more or add on to what they've got. So we're finding there are a lot of systems now, unfortunately. We're having to take them off. They're the 250 watt like you've got, they might be 300 watt. We've taken some 300 watts watts off a roof recently because they just don't have the real estate to put more up there. Yes. Uh and that the sort of the where we're at at the moment, a household residential panel sitting at 440, 475 watt, and that's it. That's just continually going to increase for a very similar footprint to what yours are.
SPEAKER_03:So and that creates a bit of a problem for people with existing solar setups, because if you're trying to stay green and um be efficient with what you've got, yeah, it it sort of goes against the grain a little bit to throw away a good functioning system.
SPEAKER_01:It does. And our industry is only just starting to embrace recycling because of the the prohibitive cost behind the recycling and the cost to move panels from A to B to a recycling plant. It's um it comes up every year at our conferences, and every year we get a little bit better at it. There is now talk, and it's going to happen. Um speaking on it from the Smart Energy Council, he's walked the halls of parliament here just two or three weeks ago. Minister Bowen has signed off on a stewardship programme. So what that means now that every solar panel that that that is sold within Australia, it hasn't come in yet, it's going to come in, will come with it with an extra cost, which then at the end of life for that panel obviously then goes back into making sure that panel is recycled and it becomes it becomes cost beneficial for those businesses that go into the recycling business because at the end of the day, well, it doesn't matter what business you're in, you're in business to make money. So if you're in business to make to recycle panels, you're not probably doing it because you want to do the right thing by the environment. You need to make money to sustain, and that's 100% how it should be. So that's happening. Uh I suggested to him he talks about how we're going to deal with the lithium batteries at the same time because they will come to an end of life, and and apparently that's all happening in the background as well. So that's really good.
SPEAKER_02:Yes.
SPEAKER_01:We are a little bit behind because the industry's gone so quickly, way faster than expectations would have thought. The policies haven't, let alone the rules and regulations, we're not even going to go there, um, haven't kept pace with the way things have turned out. So all right, we were discussing um what you've done so far in your transition to electrification of your home. Yep. And I mentioned that we were going to talk about that box on the wall, and that's going to take us into a touch on electric vehicles. We're not going to talk too much about electric vehicles, but uh your choice to buy an electric vehicle and the conversation you had with me many months ago about putting in a smart charger, which out there roughly is about$2,000 for supply and install for a smart charger. And you've come up with a what I think's actually a really um economical and a system that works for you. It might not work for everybody, but until you show me then I hadn't seen it before.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, look, I think that's a really good point. I think people need to understand uh what they are going to use the system for and then just tailor the system for their needs. Now, because I'm retired, I'm home nearly every day, I've got the ability to switch things on and off manually, old school style. Uh, I went for a dumb system. So basically I've got a 32 amp uh wall plug out there with the ability to plug a charger into that that's got a transformer in it, uh, that I can dial the energy up or down and then just physically plug it into the car.
SPEAKER_01:But it's it's not a completely dumb system, it's not that intuitive as it can be. It's Bluetooth, but I mean a dumb system is probably a 32 amp um socket outlet, yes, PowerPoint for those other people, and and and just plug it straight into your car so it's charging at full noise. Yes. But but that's a pretty cool device you've got, I think, for what for what you need.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, look, we I I'm happy with it, and I didn't want or need to go into a complex, complicated system just because I'm here and I'm retired. I can see when the sun is shining and I can hear that inverter humming, and I try and push that energy that I'm not using back into the electric vehicle, which we just purchased in February this year, and we're absolutely wrapped with that card.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I mean you're living here on the southern beaches of Hobart, which is probably oh, what is it, fit probably 15 kilometres into the city? I don't know.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, yeah, which around 1920 Ks into the city, but uh as you say up, we're in a coastal area, so predominantly uh a lot of the times the clouds sort of hug the uh the hills around this area, and we get a lot of sunshine, so because we're on the coast.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, and but I I guess it's it's a city vehicle that you've got. My wife Rowena, she we've got a Model Y, yes, and completely different sort of scenario. We live sort of twenty twenty five, twenty-eight kilometres out of the city, yep, and we do a lot of kilometres now, and probably more so. Now we've got a grandson, yes, and there's a lot of toing and froing going on. So Rowena needs her Tesla charged, you know, when she wants it charged. She doesn't want to have rat range anxiety.
SPEAKER_02:Yes.
SPEAKER_01:Um, she actually got that on the way to Launceston, I think, probably pretty heavy on the right foot.
SPEAKER_03:Uh w we don't do big K's. We're it's it's a city car, yeah. Um we'd be lucky to do 10,000 Ks a year now because none of it uh both of us don't work, and we've got the ability to um just plug this in and charge it uh at any time. Uh obviously we will try and do it when the sun's out.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, well that's right, when you can.
SPEAKER_03:Um but I went through the whole uh process of researching electric vehicles, and predominantly range anxiety is is a set of words that come up all the time.
SPEAKER_01:And it it depends on your comes when you buy the vehicle, it's actually on the on the test it does.
SPEAKER_03:On the key tag, but it depends on what you're going to use it for, uh whether that is even a valid set of words. I've got a small battery, it's I think 48 kilowatt battery, and for what we do, I'll never use 100% of that battery ever. No.
SPEAKER_01:No.
SPEAKER_03:And with my uh internal combustion engine vehicle, every time I stop that, I don't look and say, how full is the tank? And I'm doing the same with how full is the tank on the electric vehicle.
SPEAKER_01:I don't really And in five years' time, if we're having this conversation, I'm sure there's going to be a lot more charging stations all around the country, let alone Tasmania. I mean they're they're well that's they're going in all the time, aren't they?
SPEAKER_03:But I think we've got to remember that predominantly most people will be charging from home. Now, if you're doing long journeys, of course you're going to be using external charging stations. But where people can and they have off-street parking and they've got the ability to put a charging system in, most people will charge at home.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. That's a very good point. And what I want to do is tie this conversation into should or should not people then get a home battery if they're either thinking about an electric vehicle. Because I I I get this all the time, and and people ask me, uh I'm thinking about getting an electric vehicle about the 30 seconds after they've wanted a 15, 20 kilowatt battery, and they've got eight, ten kilowatts of solar. So I go, hang on a sec, just just just let's have unpack that. Yeah. Just to think that electric vehicle out there in the driveway. We need to talk about how much use it's going to get a week, when you're going to be using it, uh, how big's the battery, because that battery, just pretend it's bolted on the wall, because the solar array can't do everything. It can't then charge your home battery and then charge your car battery. And the reality is your best bang for buck is offsetting the cost of uh petrol or diesel. So if you can you know make that choice, uh, I'd be buying an electric vehicle before I put it before I bought a house battery.
SPEAKER_03:It's it's a no-brainer. If you're gonna go down the pathway of replacing your vehicle, there's a lot of choice in Australia now, uh, and it and it goes and it's only increasing. And it goes from budget all the way up to you know Tesla type prices and and others.
SPEAKER_01:And keep going.
SPEAKER_03:And keep going, yeah, that's correct. Yeah. But look, the it's an interesting conversation about house or home batteries, especially in Tasmania. Um I think we all know if if we would uh want to look out the front door or look out the window in the middle of winter, and I'm talking May, June, July, that uh the chances of producing much solar power are very, very remote. You only need to look at your your energy consumption on your Aurora app to see that it sometimes is virtually non-existent across those months. So if you're going to put a home battery in, how are you going to power that up? And I think the answer's obvious. You're going to be powering it from the grid in May, June, July in Tasmania.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I don't think I've even got to come down your driveway to try and talk you into or or out of buying a battery. You we just had this conversation over the phone and touched on it because everyone wants to know what a battery's going to cost now with the with the rebate. That's that's human nature.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Um, but it quickly turned to you know, you're a smart man, you've done your research that it wasn't an option for you.
SPEAKER_03:Well, the other part of this equation is I've got a perfectly functioning uh put in by a professional six kilowatt solar system on the roof. It is not big enough to run a battery setup, which means I'm gonna have to pull the whole thing off if I go down the battery pathway, uh, get rid of a perfectly good system, double the capacity on the roof at a minimum to be able to run, you know, 10 to 13 kilowatts of batteries. Now that's a big capital outlay. Uh and I'm probably using less than a thousand dollars a year uh in power at the moment.
SPEAKER_02:Yep.
SPEAKER_03:And of course, return on investment is uh a consideration. Uh and just common sense is is also a consideration. Why why would I spend a considerable amount of money throw away a perfectly good functioning system, what gain would I get? And I don't think the gains would be enough for me.
SPEAKER_01:That's a really good point. That's a point that we we struggle with many many times a day, um, with with customers asking, you know, I want to upgrade, I want to upgrade. We're in a throwaway society, which is a really sad in some ways, especially in the industry that we're in. We like to think we're in the renewable energy industry, but some days you don't it I don't agree with that. Um we're in the electrification industry and and and trying to you know make a greener planet, but that's another conversation. But most people go um they go for a battery or they go for solar, predominantly because they want to save save money on their power. That's their first and most predominant driver. There are other reasons why people want an attachment of a battery, and I'll just touch on a couple of those. And they are they're both okay, you know, then there's nothing wrong with well, some people just want to use their own power, they want that grid security. Um a lot of people are doomsday's, yeah, not a lot, a few people are doomsdays. They think there's going to be more um issues and un instability in the world, um, which could then impact on um the reliability of the grid, and they're only gonna watch the news to see and form an opinion. So whether that's right or wrong, let's hope they're wrong. But um also climate. Um, with the climate changing, we are getting um hotter and and more windier days, which obviously wind brings unreliability to the grid with down power lines with trees and all that, especially in Tassie.
SPEAKER_02:Yep.
SPEAKER_01:So there's a lot more brownouts and blackouts that we've we've sort of going to see moving forward. Um so that's that's one one reason behind it. People also want to capitalise on the cheaper home battery program because they think they're getting something free from the government. Free, I use that in inverted commas. Um there's no such thing as a free lunch. It is cheaper, there's no doubt about it, it is cheaper than what it was prior to the first of July. Should everyone get a battery just because it's cheaper? No, no, they should not. And that's something that we need to just occasionally stop and remind ourselves that the the madness that's gone on since the first of July in our industry is unprecedented. It is starting to to sort of return to some normality. But the fact it fact of the matter is when there's when there's his hysteria in the industry, then come in the sharks and the people just want to make money, so they want to sell batteries because they make the money. And we get back to that. Oh, we're talking the then our break. I've got a sort of a golden rule in um or or a target range, I suppose, on on your PV on your roof, you see your solar on your roof compared to how much storage you should have. And for for me, it's it's it's at about two to one. That's that's where I'm pretty comfortable to to sell someone a battery. So, for example, you you've got eight kilowatts of solar, then about 16 kilowatts of batteries is pretty good, and most days you'll charge it. Look, we live in a state where we have really short winter days and we have amazingly long summer days and and and everywhere in between. So I often say to my clients, solar's crap for three months of the year in Tassie. It is there's no sugarcoating it, it's crap.
SPEAKER_02:That's right.
SPEAKER_01:Um and for the the another three months it's off its head amazing, and we we we're charging our batteries and doing what we need to do, you know, by 10, 11 o'clock in the morning, and it's light till 9.30. So there's a big disparity at both ends of the equation, and then and then for six months in the in the year, it it's it's quite good and it's worth doing. So people just sort of need to realise that. So the two to one ratio is a pretty happy medium. You can push it out to three to one, but I say to my customers that you know, May, June, July, there's gonna be days when you're not gonna charge fully charged batteries, and that's okay, as long as they're aware of that and and they know that and that that's explained to them. Yes. What is important to notice is note as well is the fact that we don't have the ability to sell it. We talked, we touched on that earlier, didn't we? So that's important that you tailor the battery to suit your needs in your home.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. And I think the other thing that is very, very obvious moving forward is, and you talked about it earlier on, uh, there's a great push towards uh electric vehicles, and at some very soon uh there will be the ability to to utilize uh the energy in that vehicle to power the house. Now I I understand that's emerging technology and uh that's some years away.
SPEAKER_01:It's here with a lot of a lot of vehicles and charges, it's the network that hasn't allowed it yet.
SPEAKER_03:Correct. So, like everything, uh some uh sectors move faster than others, and and the the the government regulation side of things is probably not keeping up uh with pace. But um, you know, you talked about say uh 12-13 kilowatt Tesla battery. You know, I've got 48 kilowatts sitting outside in that car, and that's a small battery in an EV.
SPEAKER_01:That's right. It is, it is a small battery in an EV. There's two, there's I've got two opinions on using your vehicle for vehicle, especially vehicle to grid. Vehicle to home, not not as strong on this opinion, because that can be useful. But why would you want to have a brand new electric vehicle and then flog the guts out of it and and and it's all about throughput with a with a battery, it's power in, power out. So you are really quite rapidly shortening the life of that battery in that vehicle, which is gonna cost you$20,000,$30,000 to replace. Yeah, in fact, the Teslas they won't actually allow it. Elon's gone, no, no, we're not, we're not doing that, because that's gonna just give us a bad name. The cars are gonna last 50, you know, five, six years, and they should be lasting you know, X amount of time. So there are there are pros and cons for it. It'd be great to have your vehicle your vehicle there to power the the home in a blackout.
SPEAKER_02:Yes.
SPEAKER_01:That's a really good example, yes. Um, especially for people that are sort of more off-grid to be able to use it when they when they when they don't have the power there or an emergency, they might they might have medical machines running at home and stuff like that. So it gives them a bit of good comfort with that. Yeah it's all about understanding what you're trying to achieve and what your system is. If you're prepared to buy a a cheap electric car and and take half of it out every day and and power your home when we're allowed to, yeah, then that's okay as well. But you need that explained.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I think you absolutely need it explained and and also to understand that uh technology is moving so fast that we have no idea what this is going to look like in several years' time. Uh this conversation we're having now might be a moot point. Yeah, that's right.
SPEAKER_01:Well it will be. It will be 100%.
SPEAKER_03:It's it's an incredible transformation that's happening around us.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, I know we haven't got it here, but who would have thought that you can have a battery on the wall and another third party can suck power out of that battery um when when they want to, and there's yeah, things around that, but and give you a dollar a kilowatt for it, for example.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, well when you start to do the research and you see what's been happening in in the UK, for example, with with octopus and and other programs like that, it's just incredible, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01:Well it is, and it's all part of that uh of the tr the transition. But I I guess uh just wrapping up, you know, we're coming to um towards the end of this this segment. It's been great actually, Chris. We've had it's been a really good conversation. I I just want to sort of touch on those dot points for the homeowners out there listening. And it's a really uh holistic dot point approach. It's it's it's it's looking at your home from an energy point of view, isn't it?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, look, I think you look, quite frankly, I I think most people need to think about doing an energy audit. They need to understand uh what energy they're currently using and understand whether they can reduce that energy use and or add solar to assist with lower bills. But I think they go hand in hand. I think you need to reduce your energy usage as much as you can. And that can be done easily by shutting a hallway door, shutting a the door of a room that you're not using instead of trying to heat up the whole room. Can you explain that to my wife?
SPEAKER_01:I'm not sure if everyone is quite quite as attuned to that, but you are correct.
SPEAKER_00:And it's the wife here. I agree, it's all about those one percenters. Close the door, close the door, keep the heat in, save the money, get the best bang for your buck out of your system totally. The solar man's right into that, and I praise him for that because we've had a system for you know probably 12 to 13 years, and let me cast you back to a time, probably about 12 years ago, where you probably needed a bit of a happy wife, happy life, where we thought we'd have a FTSPA party, and it was all the rage, and I thought my mates would come around, we'd have a few wines, we'd all have a bit of fun. So everybody turned up, 15 people. You can imagine all the food was there, I was excited, good day, daughter was there, we had all the other stuff, fancy stuff around your feet. Everyone turns up, hand all the wine out. Let's go, let's go, let's all fill them up, you know, really in the groove. Turn the tap on, stone cold. Yep. They're the one percentage you don't want. You've really got to work out how you use your power. And that was probably a conversation I should have with a solar man. You know, we used to rush in the chair for three minutes, look at the clock, it was after eleven. Well, yeah, you've missed it. You've got to get in before eleven because that hot water's not heating up. I should have thought about that prior to the party. So the message is chat to your family, work out how it's going to work for you, keep the doors closed, of course, keep the heat in, but also keep that hot water going when you really need it. Happy life, happy wife.
SPEAKER_01:Well, you know, it's it's there's lots of little one percentages you can do, isn't there?
SPEAKER_03:Well, lots of those one percenters can add up to 10, 15, 20, 30 percent. And when you you know, some people I know have got two, three thousand bills a quarter, and I've got eight hundred to a thousand bills a year.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. You know what I've you know, some of them there's two of us living in this house. Some we're comfortable. You're comfortable. Some of the moments you have in this industry where when I've you know crawl through a ceiling, I go up in through the manhole, especially in old homes, yeah, before it was uh mandatory to have insulation, and you go, Oh my goodness, how good's this roof? I can crawl around here without getting itchy. Yes, uh, and there's no insulation in there, so it's beautiful. But then you get down the ladder and go, I've got to talk to the home over here because we've just putting eight kilowatts on the roof and they've got no insulation in there. They may not even know. That's correct. And and it's it's on us as as quality companies to actually inform the customer of those sort of things and where they can save. And that's just an example. I mean, you talk about rabbit, we've talked all about those other things we can do, but yeah, getting back to batteries, getting back to solar. Look, solar's cheap, batteries are still relatively expensive. So I always say get the horsepower on your roof because once you've got panels on the roof, you can do lots with it. Yes, you can push it into solar, you can push push it into resistive hot water through catch power. That's a you know, a smart energy diversion device. Yeah, one of my previous episodes we talked about that. You can push it into your electric car, you can push it into your home, or you can push it out to the grid. So that's probably your your starting point as far as your electrification goes, on top of those thermal efficiencies that we talked about.
SPEAKER_03:Well, absolutely. I mean, if you go to the point of you're starting to put things on the roof, I'd say go big with your solar panel capacity if you've got the space to do that.
SPEAKER_01:Yep, big as you can. We are limited down here with obviously when we're connected to the network, what we can and can't do. Yeah, it's fairly generous, 10 kilowatts per phase with 13.2 kilowatts of PV or solar panels on the roof.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:That then doubles if you've got battery attachment. So TAS networks in that respect are, I don't know whether they're getting blindsided a little bit with all this attachment that's going on that's that is sort of taking pace, but I'm not complaining. I don't hope we certainly hope we don't have an issue on the grid in three, four, five years' time. I'm I'm tipping we might, unless we we adapt C SIP protocols or flexible export limits and and and that what that is for those listeners is where they can actually the networks can then dial in and control your inverter. So that's a whole new conversation. We're not gonna go there, but it does allow for more saturation of PV into the grid. But at the moment it's causing some issues on some days. Chris, I'd like to thank you for joining us. I think this uh homeowners edition is going to be really great. We've just got to get it out there. So those people that are listening, if you enjoyed it, don't forget to like, share, and sub subscribe, pass it on to anyone that you think may get some benefit out of it, and hit us up on our socials. We don't actually have a Tassie Solar Man page yet, but you can hit me up through Rest Energy if you've got any questions that might have come out of this episode, or you've got any ideas for the podcast or topics you'd like to talk about, or you might be a listener out there who go, I'd love to be on George's podcast and and have a similar conversation. I'd be interested to hear from you. All right, thanks, George. Thanks, Chris.