The SwitchedOn Australia summer podcast series – How I Electrified – is a 4-part series of interviews with Australian householders who’ve electrified their homes and transport.
We find out find out how they did it, what they learnt, and what they’d do differently.
Check out previous episodes of the SwitchedOn Australia podcast here, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Sarah Aubrey is the woman behind #electrifythis. Since electrifying her own home in Sydney she’s become a passionate advocate for household electrification with thousands of social media followers.
Sarah upgraded her home from a 2.9 star energy rating to 10 stars, and because she electrified so efficiently her electricity consumption dropped from 42kWh a day in June 2022 to just 12kWh a day in June 2023.
She hasn’t paid a gas bill since.
Brody Kenrick hasn’t just decarbonised his house in southern Sydney – he’s made it carbon negative.
His house not only produces enough clean energy for his own family’s needs, but also enough to feed back into the grid and displace other people’s use of fossil fuels.
Since then he’s upgraded his son’s preschool, his parents’ house, and his in-laws.
Mark Purcell has electrified three homes and is now on a mission to get 50,000 households to electrify and install batteries.
He’s calculated that if he can get 50,000 households to install batteries, then we will need one less gas-peaker plant during the critical three or four hours of peak demand.
Rosemary Grundy has calculated how long it will take to get a return on her investment in all electric appliances and renewables she’s installed in her new home.
From the day she moved into her new house on the Sunshine coast Rosemary has diligently recorded how much she saves from not using fossil fuels, and how much she pays for electricity, and calculated she’ll break-even in just over 8 years.
Rosemary is now on a mission to show Australians who have the financial capacity, that making the transition to renewables makes financial sense – she’s working on a break-even calculator for us all to use.
Anne Delaney is the host of the SwitchedOn podcast and our Electrification Editor, She has had a successful career in journalism (the ABC and SBS), as a documentary film maker, and as an artist and sculptor.
This post was published on February 18, 2025 3:25 pm
Rising energy bills are driving a surge in complaints. The NSW Energy Ombudsman wants better…
Australians are often being misled when they try to make sustainable electrical appliance choices, and…
China EV giant bows to trend of offering "complete solutions" for home energy, with launch…
NSW Energy and Water Ombudsman Janine Young unpacks the surge in energy complaints and explores…
New data shows home battery installations had a bumper second half in 2024 – but…
Anibal Zarate's family lived so well through Tropical Cyclone Alfred that even his sceptical neighbours…