Energy

Hi everyone thanks so much for coming some familiar faces and may be partly here to support me which is great but also feel free to um get as much out of this for your personal situation at home as you can um so much to say but I might just get straight into it.

So today's session is on accelerating your homes renewable transition. Normally at UTS we're talking about National policy and and big changes like at the back in the previous session this is more about how to connect your hot water system at home and it'll find new you know small details um but a big part of the energy transition is home.

Alex did an Acknowledgement of Country before but I'd just like to reflect that I'm normally based in the Dharawal Country down in the Sutherland Shire it's beautiful area and um so respect to Elders past present and emerging.

Who am I? So I'm Jonathan Prendergast, that's a photo of me with my daughter and Craig Reucassel at the Bundeena sustainability Expo where I did a presentation not too dissimilar to this um ,but I also wear a few hats I was at Bendigo Bank um helping them uh analyse Community Investments such as Community Solar Farms, um part of Como energy who develops Community solar Farms.

I'm the technical director of Business Renewables Centre Australia and we help corporates um with know how to do power purchase agreements to fund new wind and solar farms, for their own energy need. That's those sorts of PPAs have been responsible for over half of the wind and solar fund invested in Australia and brca is hosted here at UTS in building 10. But the most relevant today is Sunny Shire as a volunteer so um based in the Sutherland Shire another guy Jay and I set up this community Energy Group and we started with a rooftop solar bulk buy where we found an installer we had faith in tested him on our own house and then set up a price list and released that launched that in Bundeena at the time. That resulted in about 5 million doolars worth of rooftop solar installations we had to expand it to a second um installer and that still goes strong today with those well the second installer they started with two directors who would uh Trent and Daniel would do the quote do the installation on the roof and so on themselves.  Now their company's 30 people in in tan point so it's um it's shown a great expansion of solar in the Sutherland Shire and great outcomes.

You may quickly like to know um about what we some of the things we've done at UTS, so I've been here for 12 years as the green infrastructure project manager uh we we did the first offsite solar PPA um in 200 uh must have been about 2015. I've also helped project manage many rooftop solar installations here. Here it's kind of not like a big sprawling campus or anything is it, it's more a series of commercial buildings like the extension of the CBD so it's hard to get a lot of rooftop solar. 

So I think that's um that's urad dang on the building four um building four over there we installed 70 KW for about $100,000 but that only supplies under under 1% of its annual power demand so we've always had to be Innovative here at UTS. We have a Tech Lab out at Botany and we're installing one megawatt of solar there despite not using it so it's like a mini Urban solar farm on dex's on now Goodman's uh warehouses to try and meet our sustainability and energy needs. And also um Heating and Cooling we ran out of space for cooling towers and chillers when we were building UTS Central. So UTS Central is the podium and new tower next door, so what we did is we formed an agreement with Central Park across the road who have a central thermal plant thermal plant five chillers underground supplying all the cooling for that whole Precinct. We have a similar one under this Tower supplying seven UTS buildings, and now there's two pipes under the road um 500 M each so supplying cooling into our central plant to try and meet our air conditioning needs. So I developed a business case and project managed um the delivery of that. So that's under a 15 year agreement,  um a 4 A2 megawatt uh chilled Supply agreement. So UTS does lots of cool things and is very well known in the energy industry for Innovation for things like these projects. 

So on today's agenda, now you know enough about me and what I do at UTS is about household electrification changing electricity prices rooftop Solar, Smart Home batteries, hot water, heating and cooking that is correct, Heating and cooking, um not heating and cooling, um and  the program's electrification overview um so I'll just be touching on these things today, not going too in depth on any of them and I'll try and go through at a reasonable speed um so we have time for questions and answers. But we now have a landing page which will list future events where they'll go in more in depth on particular topics. The cool thing is by being here today you're helping to shape that so we want to know what what you'd like to know in those sorts of events and so on.

Now I've tried to make this complicated for me myself today so we've got um menty meter going. So if you don't mind could you go to menty meter
m.com and plug in um that particular code and I'll just get it going on my end what could possibly go wrong.

I'm just getting this going now. All right has the first one come up there on your screens on your phones the first question so I'd like to know what you have at home do you have rooftop solar you few people are are voting uh heat pump rooftop solar with battery do you have a fully electric home or the bonus prize goes to a fully electric home with an EV as well.

Now how do I share the results with you can you see the results after you voted? I've got this screen no I haven't set it up on on here but I was hoping if I press a button it would share the results for this well we've got 10, 14, 15 votes and eight have rooftop solar. Those with rooftop solar would you like to put your hands up? Excellent and this could be if you're renting or still living with parents at that place play as well, I'd say no. It's um so heat pumps um no batteries five with so 33% 1/3 with fully electric homes and one with electric home and EV.

So the basis of what this program is, there was a time 10 to 15 years ago where there was not much we could do at home to be sustainable and be involved in the energy transition and the primary option was green power. That was paying a little more for your electricity to buy certificates as accreditation that you're 100% renewable and that money would flow to some wind farm in South Australia. But now we're suddenly, our households are at the center of the the energy transition whether it's rooftop solar, Ed's previous presentation he mentioned that in South Australia rooftop solar sometimes meets 100% of demand in South Australia in the middle of the day some days we have uh heat pumps EV charging batteries that can help stabilize the grid um if you.

I'm not sure if anyone knows of rewiring Australia and S griffi is bringing some like Rockstar Communications and and so on to this space and it's really growing and houses now have lots they can do at home. Um momentum is building so this is um the amount of solar capacity in
Australia around 2018 which um it really took a a kick that was because solar became much more affordable and energy prices went High um so we now we're up to um 33 no 36 gigawatts of rooftop of solar capacity ,we're also seeing EV charging coming in which will add around 25% of
demand but can be used to help stabilize the grid and soak up renewables when it's cheap and abundant and hopefully bring down energy prices overall.

So next question uh that poll um that slide the pole is wrong um but next
question is how, this is more of a pop quiz, how much of the past year's generation in New South Wales has been renewable? Has it been 16% 34% 58% or 81%. And it's fine to guess and be wrong we just want to sort of hear from the crowd. o I think maybe it's happening so quickly we're installing wind and solar so quickly that the that percentage is increasing a lot each year, so people underestimate it based on what they hear in the media. But it's currently 34% so 11 of you got that right well done uh seven Guess 16% so underestimating and five thought 58% um that we're actually generating more than a 34% so that's pretty impressive. Wind solar and hydro is now supplying New South Wales 34% it's higher in South Australia and Victoria Victor like 45% um but it's it's good great progress compared to a few years ago, because New South Wales was a lagard and we have a lot of coal. 

All right next question um what was the peak supply of renewables percentage-wise energy in New South Wales yesterday. So we're 34% over the past 12 months where did Renewables Peak yesterday? Was it 16% 34% 58% or 81%. So everyone's saying 58%, well not everyone, uh one is saying 16% two three three are saying 34% so similar to the last 12 months so whilst it was 34% overall for 12 month last 12 months. Wind and solar peaked at 81% yesterday so this is sort of part of this theme I'm emerging, that we can Renewables are becoming abundant and it's more about how we use energy rather than generate it.

So you can see this yesterday, so this is seven days of energy demand and Supply in New South Wales the black is coal the blue or purple I'm color blind is imports from other states, the yellow and orange is solar, the green is wind. And there's some little bit of blue hydro and some gas as well. So you can see yesterday at this moment we're 81% renewable which is quite phenomenal. This looked a lot different 5 years ago and overall that's that's sitting in about 40% for the week 34% for the last 12 months. So what we're doing now in the energy industry is trying to create incentives for you to use um energy while it's cheap and abundant and encourage you to use energy less at peak times in where all in Ausgrid area, so Ausgrid owned the poles and wires and they set the network tariffs and it used to be in true energy world not simple for the consumer to understand. The energy world is always doing two complex spreadsheets and not thinking about customer focus and the and user experience. So it used to be summer months peak was different, winter months was different um and weekends and weekdays were different. And it was Peak shoulder and off peak and complicated um a couple of months ago first of July they changed it. So now we have Peak 300 p.m. to 9 p.m. um 7 days a week for summer and winter and all other times are off peak. So this is quite a fundamental change simplification um to try and encourage us all to use power in this blue spot and not in the 3:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. Peak. At those peak times. So energy rates are much cheaper from them during uh this blue time than the the green time.

So poll four which this is another Pop Quiz sorry if you find them condescending. Uh poll four um which fees go to the local network the polls and wise company to Ausgrid is it none, there like a government business and it's paid for by our taxes like the roads, is it uh the daily
connection fee, is it a proportion of fixed and usage charges, or is it our whole bill goes to is um fees to Ausgrid.

So well done um the the group has uh done very well on this question so the reason I asked this is it can be a misunderstanding. My dad is a geophysicist and knows energy and everything but he always thought it was the daily connection fee that goes to osgrid but it's actually a proportion of all the costs. Um and what's Happening Here is in off peak you pay Network energy and other charges other include environmental charges and that'ss given to you as a bundled rate say 20 cents per kilowatt hour. And then Peak includes a much higher Network charge includes also higher energy charges because energy is more expensive than we're relying on peaking Supply and those other charges. And that might be 40 cents per Kow hour um um and there's companies so that's how kind of Ausgrid have set it up. But company retailers, so you might be with AGL or with origin or so on, are starting to innovate around this so this is a company called IO energy that are promoting this super off peak 10:00 a.m. to 400 p.m. to encourage you to use solar during the middle of the day and to discourage using Peak. They're the ones you actually pay um pay the fees to and they pass through the the network charges back to Ausgrid. And you may know is anyone with oovo on their free energy plan so oo 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. is 0 cents per Kil hour so free power to try and um encourage you to use um power in the middle of the day. And Jay um in Kareela who I co-founded Sunny Shire with, um now about 95% of his energy imports from the grid are during that three 3 hour window. So he charges his battery his hot water and his electric car all during that time to soak up free power and benefit from it.

Um so hot water and EV charging. On the left is what you call uncontrolled hot water. So every time someone has had a shower the hot water tank is reheating again and you can see like a bigger one must been a lot of showers there. Does that graph make sense on the left? Generally the Energy System doesn't like that because some of it's happening during peak times um at our house, and this is a a solar a solar production curve for that house there at our house we got a heat pump in the middle of the day soaking up some of our solar power so much better for the energy system and and and for our energy bills.

So when it comes to storage most of the focus is on Tesla power walls. You can charge your battery and then use it in in the evening, but hot water with hot water tanks and electric vehicles are a pretty similar concept. You can soak up the energy at the cheap times for later use, for later driving your car, or for later showers and so on.

These are much cheaper forms of storage rather than, so um a hot water tank is about $1,000 for 8 Killowatt hours whereas a battery like a Tesla power wall for that capacity would be at $8,000 so it's 8 times cheaper for of storage and same with electric vehicles they're like a battery on wheels and a great way to store power.

Electrification is not cheap so we can't expect everyone to switch from a gas powered home or partly gas partly electric to fully electric overnight because it might spend $4,000 on a heat pump and for air conditioning might be another $10,000. Then induction cooktops can cost like $3,00 $4,000 if you include installation. But it can be done a little bit on the cheap and this is applicable for renters too um so firstly um this is a $69 induction um cooking um thing that plugs into the PowerPoint. At home we bought one of these for camping and now it sits on top of our electric stove cuz it's better than our old electric sort of style stove it's quicker and more responsive. So we bought it for camping for $69 and now it's our primary way of cooking food on the stove top um it means we have to use the microwave a lot more because we can't do two pans at once.

Reverse cycle air conditioner this is the cheapest way to heat your home. So not an electric heater ducting Heating and Cooling can be efficient but is often inefficient um but installing a reverse cycle air conditioner is a cheap cheapest way to heat your home. And there are very cheap heat pumps for for hot water available. Now these come with a lot of risk that a year later some plumbers pulling it out it's not working anymore you're getting no support from the supplier and you're going to install a gas or electric tank system, but you can get them for $99 and there are thousands upon thousands of people happy with like the Mya chromogen, which is not $99 more like 299 or something like that after subsidies. So all up $1,662 could be a temporary way to to move to electrical an electric home and the way I see it is if you um already have electric hot water and heating and you don't want to pay $4,000 right now to get an induction stove top, but you want to get off gas, this could be like a one to two year measure. For instance if you want to go electric and get off gas um but you have all the cash up front.

So I think we're nearly at the end. So what's the plan? We see an opportunity um at UTS to help the staff and students uh move their homes to all electric. Building wind and solar to reduce emissions is a slow and arduous process and we've been involved in that here at UTS and it takes a long time. Whereas this potentially could happen quicker and cheaper in terms of trying to reduce emissions.

It's not efficient for every household to do all their own research on their own and try and work out the best option for them to have a central trusted source of information like UTS and myself and some of the guests we'll have um is a lot more efficient.

We can help you guide you along the way on on how to make good purchasing decisions. We also want people to avoid poor experiences and results so someone goes with a cheap and nasty Solar Company and a year later it's not working and they're not returning calls they're probably not going to tell their friends to get solar or their neighbors to get solar so we want to help avoid those sorts of problems. Going electric is not like a one-off decision it's an ongoing support that is needed so someone like me that's around here at UTS can help you along the way and there's probably many more benefits that I haven't thought of just yet.

Final poll is what would you like to hear about in future events. So we'd love to hear from you. Is it around rooftop solar, hot water, gas abolishment, so getting the gas meter abolished, just checking no one could see the results when they did these votes everyone relied on me to um to view them is that right Alex? What's that.

So I'll just report back on the results on that one, so we'll have time for questions in a moment so um the results coming in on this one just now. The most popular so so far is vehicle to grid VT v2g I think we should have a an event on electric vehicles and electric vehicle charging. Battery storage system, best heat pump options, electric vehicles, electric car versus fuel, EVS, future solar, uh gas abolishment hacks for off peak usage, why gas is bad - yes we should not just assume that everyone agrees and um discuss through um the up the good things and bad things of gas. How nature can help. Really clever so solar um solar design to um reduce bills and Emissions just using nature thank you so much that's given us a lot of food for thought.  

So we as of this morning have a website a landing page and this will host um all sort of news and updates on our events. The URL is um under UTS sustainability Campus Operations household electrification. I'm not sure it will um rank that highly in SEO yet so UTS energy and Greenhouse if you search for that, you'll be able to then click onto household electrification. 

Thank you so much thanks for coming and supporting today and
attending thank you and now time for for any questions.