Pilot Application
After over a year of discussions with ARENA (the Australian Renewable Energy Agency), Rewiring Australia and partners have submitted a final application for funding for a pilot project to subsidise and support 500 homes in 2515 to electrify. We’ve cleared some significant stages in the process and we think we will know the final result by the end of July. Here is a brief summary of the application - we will share more details with you over the coming weeks on this exciting prospect for our community.
Applicants
The pilot proposal is a joint collaboration between:
Rewiring Australia, non-profit research and advocacy organisation.
Rewiring Australia will continue to engage the community, supported by local community group Electrify 2515, and will look after the education and research elements of the project.
Brighte, sustainable energy and finance company.
Brighte will work with vendors, installers and customers to manage household electric upgrades. This is similar to the role they are playing with the ACT Government’s Sustainable Homes Project and the Tasmanian Government, demonstrating their experience managing large installation and customer support projects. Customers will have multiple finance options available (not just Brighte). Brighte’s primary role is to use their electrification product management and customer service delivery experience to make the electrification process easier for homes.Endeavour Energy, our local electrical distribution network operator.
Endeavour will be assessing and supporting network impacts including understanding how energy loads can be managed, designing tariffs and generating insights for proactive roles of network distributors in managing the energy transition.
Premise
“One of the fastest and most effective steps we can take to reduce Australia’s carbon emissions is to electrify our households. ”
Switching fossil fuel powered cars and appliances with efficient, electric machines run on renewable energy will not only drastically address the bulk of our domestic emissions, it will save Australian households thousands of dollars a year on energy costs.
Australia has the opportunity to develop and benefit from world-first learnings in this shift to electrification. Yet to rapidly retrofit and electrify Australia’s housing stock will present a number of challenges. Not least that our grid is designed for a fossil fuel past and our houses and behaviours are all different.
The energy transition is upon us and we need to work out how to do it best. We have the choice to go about it the slow and expensive way - or - we can use a pilot project in a real-world community to understand how to do it faster and smarter.
This is an extraordinary opportunity to run a world-first project to fast track our future energy system and bring a range of benefits to households.
Objectives
The main objective of the pilot is to identify, analyse and remove the bottlenecks of electrifying houses and the integration with the grid at the local level in order to accelerate electrification at the national level.
At the end of the pilot, we’re hoping we have close to 500 homes fully or mostly electrified, that is, to have an electric hot water system, space heater, cooktop, and where possible solar and a battery. These homes will enjoy the ongoing benefits of reduced energy bills and healthier homes, whilst supporting our local economy and participating in a crucial study into our future energy scenario.
The electrification of these 500 homes will attempt to answer some of these key questions:
What are the challenges and costs of electrifying diverse housing types, with varying electrical wiring and constraints, and how can it be done more efficiently and cost effectively?
How can energy savings be increased for consumers and financial packages be offered to encourage greater uptake of electric appliances?
How can we prepare our homes and our grid for a future of greater uptake of electric appliances and cars?
Can we make our energy system not just electric but smarter and more flexible with behaviour change, controllable technologies and network tariffs?
By how much will household carbon emissions be reduced if we electrify and how will this benefit Australia?
What can we learn from one real world community that can be applied to the rest of the nation?
Pilot Structure
The project will support 500 diverse homes connected to one local substation to electrify. The main aspects will be:
Subsidies
Households will be offered subsidies to update their key appliances to efficient, electric versions, and financial products (eg. low interest loans) to help afford the difference.
Installations
Via an online platform, households can choose and coordinate which electric appliances to be installed in their home, such as water heaters, space heaters, cooktops, solar and batteries.
Energy Management
Households will be supplied with a Home Energy Management System (HEMS). This is a small piece of technology that lets households monitor and control their energy usage, to help create an electricity grid that can be more responsive.
Research
The interrelationship between consumers, energy loads, appliances, electricity grid, installations, smart technology and education will be analysed to determine how electrification can best be rolled out and scaled up.
Participants & subsidies
Thank you to those who completed our original survey - this helped demonstrate that 2515 is a suitable site for such a pilot.
The process of determining who will participate and what they will receive is roughly:
Step 1: Survey
If the pilot is approved, one of the first activities will be a second, more comprehensive survey to determine which households are interested and eligible for being one of the 500 homes. You would need to complete this if you want to put your hand up to take part.
Step 2: Assessment
The survey results will be assessed and subsidies determined. It’s hard to put an exact amount on the subsidy amount at this stage but it could result in about 20 - 40% off standard costs for households.
The make-up of the participants and amount of subsidy depends on a range of factors, to determine the balance between fairness, accessibility and maximum participation, such as:
Willingness to electrify - those who are keen to be off gas, switch to electric appliances, have a free HEMS installed (see above) and be a part of this innovative research project.
House type - A diverse range of house archetypes are desired (eg. single versus multi-residential).
Household income - Subsidies will vary based on income, with those on lower income offered a higher subsidy to support participation.
Solar - Pre-existing or willingness to get solar will be encouraged (however, if properties are unable to have solar, they won’t necessarily be excluded).
Step 3: Offers
Households will be offered a place in the program, and made aware of the subsidies they can access and what financial products are available if they wish to use these to pay the difference (eg. low-interest loans from various lenders).
Step 4: Product selection and installation
Participants choose which products they’d like installed (you will be free to choose from a wide range of products) and the installation will be arranged via the Brighte platform using accredited installers.
What is not included
The original application to ARENA included funding for electric vehicles and community infrastructure. ARENA excluded these components so they won’t be funded under this program, but we will continue to look for potential alternative funding partners for community infrastructure. Solar PV won’t be subsidised, as there are already strong incentives available, but we will continue to strongly advocate for houses to adopt solar.
As the funding won’t include rooftop solar or EVs, check out our solar rollout program if you haven’t already and our recent EV open day info and offers about making the EV switch.
Timeline
When the project can start will depend on if and when the application is accepted by ARENA. If approved, it is slated to run from late 2024 to 2026.
The pilot will be broken into 4 phases:
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4 months
Install 10 houses with HEMS
EOI Survey
Installers register interest
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5 months
Electrify 50 houses
Baseline data
Calculation of soft costs
Eligibility determined
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9 months
Electrify 440 homes
Tariff investigation
Network support
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12 months
Analysis & reporting
What’s next
We’re sure you have more questions than answers right now, so we will endeavour to provide more information over the next couple of months. As mentioned, Rewiring Australia/Brighte/Endeavour is hoping to learn of the application’s success in mind 2024. If successful, there will be a period of contract negotiations, fine tuning and building of the project framework. Electrify 2515 will be supporting Rewiring Australia with the community engagement and education components of the project so we will organise a number of information opportunities to explain the proposal in more detail and answer questions.
In the meantime we will keep updating you on the progress of the application. Hopefully we will bring further good news!
With thanks,
Electrify 2515 Team
