Knowledge is power – control your energy bills, increase home comfort

Despite the wintery conditions, was an enthusiastic audience to listen to our speakers Tim Forcey, David Coote, Ken Parker and David Strang, learn about electrifying and increasing their home’s energy efficiency, and launch Tim Forcey’s new book, The Efficient Electric Home Handbook.

David Strang, the moderator for the evening, was unfazed by two late speaker withdrawals due to illness and was the sub speaker for scorecard assessor John Godfrey and home efficiency expert Charlie Phillips’ contributions, aided by the welcome addition of home energy expert David Coote. 

You can download the slide sets here:

• John Godfrey
• Charlie Phillips
• Ken Parker
• David Coote

Scorecard Assessments

David Strang highlighted the key points from Scorecard assessor John Godfrey’s presentation. You can download his slideset for more information.

 

• Know what you want from the scorecard assessment – are you wanting to improve your home’s rating or are you seeking to increase the comfort in your home?
• A scorecard assessment takes 2 – 3 hours
• The scoring is between 1 to 10, the average Australian home scores 3
• New homes are now tdesigned to achieve a rating of  7 but are they built to achieve a score of 7?
• A scorecard can be useful in tying to unlock green finance
• A well designed and built home requires very little energy to be comfortable
• A home scoring 10 is an overall contributor of energy to the grid

So the scorecard goes through every element of the house, it goes and assesses the house or the home out of ten on a number of certain areas. It also goes through the fixed appliances. So if you’ve got inefficient appliances, those will get scored down. So it will give you an overall efficiency for the home.

 

It’s a Victorian government set up thing and it’s a standardized way to assess an existing home. But it is a computer program. I mean, they’ll measure every window, they’ll measure every room. Which way is it facing? They might put like 500 pieces of information into the computer fairly quickly, push a button and boom, you see the six star thing and it will list improvement options.

 

But the people that set up the scorecard will say that’s only part of it. The other part is that the assessor does need to be a knowledgeable person who can then work with you to prioritize.

 

Energy Efficiency and Draught Proofing

David also gave the key messages from the Charlie Phillips  Earthworker Smart Energy Cooperative presentation.

Earthworkers can:

• Do scorecard assessments
• Thermal assessments, finding draughts and draught proof your home
• Fit secondary glazing

You will have a more comfortable home, lower energy bills and better health.

More details on the full slideset here or get the essential in a scan through our blog on draught proofing and insulation here.

 

So how to find drafts? Yeah, there are ways to find them. Windows that rattle. Yeah. Is a bit of a give away, draft under the door. Or if you just feel cold air from anywhere.

 

So how to prevent them? Sealing gaps and cracks and wall vents, install seals on the bottom of doors, install perimeter seals, insulate and zone out rooms, for instance in the bathroom, in the laundry that don’t necessarily need to be kept to the same temperatures.

 

Free home energy assessments with Electrify Boroondara

Ken Parker outlined the Electrify Boroondara Home Energy Guide program

Ten volunteers have undertaken three days training in home energy efficiency, look through your home, work with you to assess priorities  and offer a report. This is a free service, and is a great way to get started on your journey to a more comfortable home. More details in the slideset here. 

• Electrify Boroondara Home Energy Guides visit households within Boroondara in pairs to assess the home for thermal efficiency and appliance efficiency
• The visit takes approx 2 hours 
• The guides send a written report to the householder with their top 3 recommendations to increase energy efficiency and suggestions for  future opportunities eg solar panels 
• There is no charge and 100 % volunteer powered service
• Desire to be providing this free service to residents who would not be able to access fee charging services 

 

We visit your home, we identify the situation there, we look at what building shell upgrades can be done.We look at the appliances, we look at how the energy generation is done, and we can even review your energy bills.  It takes around about one and a half hours, that’s all.

 

We discuss it with you and then we write up, report and submit that to you. And normally we would give you the top three suggestions and then some other options. And these are always options that you can do at relatively little cost.

You can also visit the Electrify Boroondara website for a wealth of information including a Getting Started tips sheet with links and a very comprehensive presentation with links to guides, subsidies, services and cost comparisons, and information about the efficiency and health benefits of electric appliances.

Energy Systems

David Coote whose company is  Analytical Engines expanded the audience’s mind with the opportunities and efficiencies a bit of energy data crunching can deliver. David helps householders with energy system decisions to achieve what all householders want from their energy systems:

• comfort
• reliability and resilience
• reduced energy costs

David sends his clients a questionnaire before he visits and analyses their current energy consumption to inform his recommendations.  A copy of this checklist can be accessed here, and his slideset here.

 

So what households want from their energy systems? I think people want to be warm, they want to be comfortable. Now, these are outcomes you can actually have from active heating systems. But it’s much more effective in many ways to have it from insulation and just have some residual heating.

He can model the performance of recommended systems, help with sourcing installers and help monitor outcomes, for instance checking on timing with hot water heating with solar.

 

David stated that he generally recommends that clients consider a battery as he suspects that the grid may be less reliable over the coming years.

So then I’ll model those new systems. Well that’s going to cost, you know, in terms of annual all and then prepare a report for the client. And if they want me to, I can help liaise with installers. A lot of people find when they’re dealing with installers that it’s just completely foreign to them and that they can get quite confused.

So having me there means I can listen to the installer and then come back to the client and say, well, this is what they mean by that. If you make this decision, these are the outcomes. If you make that decision, these are the outcomes.

 

Book Launch with home energy expert Tim Forcey

Tim Forcey was the final speaker.

Tim spoke about his journey and the recent release of My Efficient Electric Home Handbook

He told us he used to work for Exon and he had also worked for BHP, but left the oil and gas industry over a decade ago, increasingly disillusioned. A light bulb  moment for Tim was when he calculated the much lower costs of heating with split systems rather than gas during work at Melbourne University in 2015.

Why electrify?

Right now, communities around the country are electrifying:

• Victoria is leading the move away from household gas and he gave credit to the actions of current Minister for Energy & Resources, Lily D’Ambrosio 
• Victoria needs to get off gas as the gas and oil discovered in Bass Strait is largely depleted
• Victoria cannot produce enough gas for its requirements, an increasing amount of gas used in Victoria is gas from coal seams in Queensland.
• Victoria only has 6 hours of reserve gas in its pipelines.

Getting off gas

There are three major reasons for Victoria to move away from gas – running out of gas in Victoria, the climate, and the much lower cost of running electric appliances:

• Electric heat pumps are more efficient than gas heating and gas hot water
• Heating with a split system is ⅓ cost of gas and ⅕ cost of a radiant electric heater
• Hot water with a heat pump is ⅓ cost of gas hot water and if the house has solar panels it can be nearly free

So that’s what we’re doing these days. We’re electrifying. We’re heating our living spaces with reverse cycle air conditioners. We’re using the same heat pump, reverse cycle technology, to heat water in the form of a hot water heat pump. And of course, we’re getting over to the induction cooking. And why not? 12% of childhood asthma has been linked to gas cooking in the home. 

 

So there’s reasons we shouldn’t be burning stuff in the house or in the kitchen. If it’s got the potential for causing asthma in the home, you probably don’t want to be running it. And if it’s your last gas appliance, you’ll be getting a gas bill this big for just that amount of gas because you’ll be paying a dollar a day just to be connected. And so you might as well go the whole way and move past gas cooking.

My Efficient Electric Home facebook page now has 126,000 followers, and is growing rapidly, recently adding 1,000 new followers per week. The page functions as a searchable database and is full of members questions, and localised specific solutions on the journey to lower bills, lower emissions and more comfortable homes.

Tim took 9 days to complete his My Efficient Electric Home Handbook drawing largely on material from a podcast he was involved with The Design Files. The book offers sound practical advice on electrification as well as energy efficiency and is a must have when facing the myriad decisions involved in going electric.

At the conclusion the audience warmly applauded all speakers and their liveable planet saving work