Dec 2023 - Yvonne's power bills are less than $80 a month. Here's how she did it.

 

Yvonne's power bills are less than $80 a month. Here's how she did it.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-12-07/power-bills-renewable-energy-efficient-home/103192374

Key points:

• 
  
• Power bills have risen by 45 per cent in two years

• Experts warn the capital costs of clean energy transition will flow through to consumers

• The transition to renewables is estimated to cost $383 billion by 2050.

Yvonne Parker remembers having to sleep outside in the front yard of her housing commission home as a child when the temperature inside reached 50 degrees Celsius in summer.

This memory of living in a "terrible" uninsulated brick and concrete house inspired her, decades later, to create an energy-efficient home on Victoria's picturesque coastline that's cool in summer, warm in winter and, importantly, immune from rising power prices.

"We find it so utterly liveable, that we just love it," she said, brimming with pride.

The retired social scientist and her daughter spent about $10,400 out of their own pocket and took advantage of $6,500 worth of state government subsidies to install solar panels, a battery, an inverter and heat pump – an investment they predict will take about six years to recoup.

Their power bill is now sitting at around $80 a month, which Ms Parker reckons "is pretty hard to match".

As prices climb, Australians are taking control of their power bills: more than 3.4 million households and businesses have rooftop solar and about 185,000 of them are backed by batteries.

According to the competition watchdog, which analysed retail market offers, the median annual household bill is now sitting around $1,926 across the National Energy Market — a 45 per cent increase in two years.

Politically this figure is problematic for a federal government that was elected on a promise to cut household power bills by an average of $275 a year by 2025.

Instead, prices have gone in the opposite direction, rising by about $600 since that pledge was made.

By 2030 the government wants 82 per cent of Australia's electricity to come from wind, solar and hydro, up from about 32 per cent now, backed by a vast new network of high-voltage transmission lines to connect these far-flung renewables to consumers.

Shifting from fossil fuels to renewables in just seven years is an "economic transformation on the scale of the industrial revolution", according to Ms McNamara, who warns "it's not costless".

A price tag can be found in the Australian Energy Market Operator's own figures, buried deep in its Integrated System Plan, mapping the decades-long clean energy transition.

The total of all costs of phasing out coal and gas-fired power stations and replacing them with wind, solar, hydro and batteries on an industrial scale between now and 2050 is estimated to be about $383 billion.