Difficult, confusing, annoying and expensive - an energy expert's experience of going all-electric

As the CEO of RACE for 2030, a cooperative research centre working on a clean energy future, and someone who has been working in the energy space for 45 years, Jon Jutsen has a personal passion, and a professional reason, for electrifying and decarbonising.

But Jutsen was not prepared for how hard or ‘annoying’ the process of fully electrifying his home would be.

“If I didn't have the determination, and personal passion, there's no way I would get to the end of this process,” says Jutsen.

Despite the challenges he faced electrifying his own home, Jutsen told the SwitchOn podcast that he is still optimistic Australia can decarbonise by 2050 if we all electrify, but we have some challenges that we need to overcome.

‍

A tree change

When Jon Jutsen and his wife decided on a tree change just prior to Covid, and moved into a house in the southern highlands of NSW, he was determined to find ways to minimise his household carbon footprint.

Initially though, his objective wasn’t to electrify everything. “My objective was to be carbon neutral and not waste resources." 

He found the most effective way to do that was to first improve the energy efficiency of his home by adding more insulation, and then find the most energy efficient appliances, which turned out to be electrical ones.

He started the process by putting 8.6 kilowatts of solar on the north side of his roof, and a bit on the west side, and then he looked for a new hot water heater.

‍

Heat pump

Jutsen opted for a high-end heat pump to heat his water which, at $5,500, even with the NSW government subsidies, was expensive.

“We got the top of the range CO2 unit. It works very well. It's extremely quiet and it's got very high reliability.”

However, Jutsen is not sure whether the heat pump was the best choice on purely short-term economics.

“I probably would have got abetter economic outcome from putting in a resistive water heater with a controller so that it only ran when there was surplus PV, because we do have a fair bit of surplus.”

Nevertheless, he’s happy with the unit and calculated that it will have a 4 to 5 year payback.

A battery or an EV?

Jutsen admits he was fortunate enough to have the resources to electrify, including the capacity to buy aTesla Y on a novated lease, which allowed him to lease the car under a salary sacrifice arrangement that gave him a big tax benefit.

Jutsen didn’t opt for a battery to store power from his solar though because the economics of home batteries is still “absolutely tragic.”

What he really wanted to do was use the battery in his EV to store the surplus solar from his PV panels.

“Electric vehicles have got immense batteries. If I bought a Tesla Powerwall for home, for example, it's got about 9 kilowatt hours capacity, whereas the Tesla's got about 65 kilowatt hours.”

Unfortunately, it’s not yet possible to use an EV as a home battery. This requires bidirectional charging which enables a car to receive a charge and also supply power back to the grid, or directly to the home.

However, the next generation of cars designed for bidirectional charging are not available in Australia, or anywhere yet.

South Australia is so far the only jurisdiction in Australia that has approved bidirectional charging, but there are currently hardly any bidirectional public or home chargers in Australia.

The regulation changes and infrastructure that will enable bidirectional charging are coming, and Jutsen hopes it will be possible within the two years he’s taken his lease out on his Tesla.

Still connected to gas

Unlike many people who are electrifying their homes, Jutsen did not pay a fee to disconnect from the gas.

“We didn't have to. I just said I don't want to pay any more gas bills and so please turn off the gas to my property.”

Technically he still has the gas connection, but the gas company switched off the supply after he paid his final bill.

“There was no negotiation. They were perfectly pleasant about it and said, OK, done.”

The process was hard and annoying

Even though he clearly knew what it takes to electrify a home, and even though he’s well qualified and knowledgeable – he’s a trained engineer and has a Masters in Energy Technology – Jutsen’s experience of electrifying his home was much harder than he anticipated.

“The whole process [of electrification] from beginning to end was annoying.”

“It took me three months to get someone just to get a quote to put in the heat pump.”

After waiting a further 3 months, Jutsen still did not have his heat pump so he had to get more quotes. He finally managed to find an electrician with a refrigeration qualification who could install the pump, but they could not disconnect the old gas water heater from the gas.

When he finally found a plumber who was available, they realised their gas licence had expired. It had to be renewed before he could do the removal.

“It was like weeks before we finally got rid of the thing and finished the job.”

Next was the installation of the EV charger.

‍

“The guy that installed the EV charger had a look at the [electrical] board and said, look, all these people that have come in doing these last few projects have made spaghetti [of your wiring].”

Jutsen already had three phase power to the property, but it turned out that all the new appliances had been installed on only one phase.

He had to pay someone to cleanup the wiring and put in new protection devices. He also had to get “some sub-metering to allow me to measure what the usage is of my major appliances.”

Jutsen is still waiting for a controller that will enable him to visualise and control the energy he uses and maximise the use of his PV.

‍

It ain't cheap

All up, Jutsen spent $22,850 electrifying and decarbonising his home - $11,000 on solar panels,$5,500 on a hot water heat pump, $1000 to rewire the electrical board, $750 on energy monitoring, $2000 for an electric vehicle charger to be installed, $2000 to install an induction cooktop, and $600 for additional insulation to ensure the electrification works more efficiently.

That doesn’t include the cost of the high efficiency air conditioner for heating and cooling which was already installed in the house when they moved in. And nor does it include the$71,000 Tesla model Y EV.

Jutsen is well aware he was fortunate to have the resources to pay for high quality and efficient electrical appliances.

“It's absolutely an impediment for people on average incomes …. until we get all of this stuff pulled together so that it's easy, and can be financed with long-term, low-interest loans, so that you can actually get your money back through this process without having to put up a lot of cash in front.”

He believes government incentives like tax credits, that are substantial and cost effective, will “make a very big difference to the take up rate” of efficient electrical appliances.

Skills shortage‍

Jutsen’s electrification journey highlights a major impediment for Australia’s electrification – we  currently lack the skills base to produce and install all the electric appliances we need to fully decarbonise our homes and businesses by 2050.

In The Wires that Bind, DrSaul Griffith, Chief Scientist at Rewiring Australia, estimates that we will need to swap out around 60 million residential and commercial fossil fuel machines to get to net zero.

We’ll also need 30 to 40 million new electric machines to support our electric future, including solar panels on an additional 5 to 7 million households, batteries on around 5 million, and 10 to 20 million EV chargers. 

“You only have to try and get an electrician in to install your EV charger now, with just a tiny number that have been installed, to recognise what the problem is going to be if we scale up by 10 times,” says Jon Jutsen.

“There's a big skills gap in technical skills, both professional and trade, that we need to address urgently, if we're going to be able to meet demand.”

“This is not a job where you can just ring someone up and say, ‘look, I would like to get a net zero house, tell me what to do.’ And if I didn't know what I wanted, it would have been so confusing. I would have never gone ahead with half of it.”

‍

‘We have to take this on a war footing’

In his day job as the CEO of RACE for 2030, Jutsen is now involved in several projects to clearly identify the impediments to electrification, and what will be needed to address the challenges.

RACE will soon be launching a major research project on ‘Energy Upgrades for Australian Homes’, which aims to facilitate the decarbonisation of more than 1 million homes, and is working on a the design of a major electrification project in SA.

Jutsen has calculated that if we are going to get to net zero by 2050 we should aim to have a third of the job done by 2030. That will mean a massive scaling up in the sale and installation of electric appliances.

“If you're going to do a third of the job by 2030, from next year on, and every year till 2030, we need to have EV sales go up 10 times, heat pump hot water sales go up 10 times, induction cooktop sales go up 5 times, air conditioning installations by twice, home energy management systems probably 1000 times, and batteries maybe 5 to 10 times.”

He’s well aware that this is a massive challenge, but he remains optimistic that it is possible.

“We have to take this on a war footing, I think that really is the case. We really need to look at how do we massively escalate our activities in this area, and organise them in such a way that large numbers of people can actually do this successfully.”

Like other people working in the energy space, Jutsen believes we need to establish ‘one-stop-shops’ that will have the skills, resources and information to help project manage the electrification process for householders.

It’s just one idea that the researchers at Race for 2030 plan to pilot.

Increase the value of homes

For householders who are ready to make the switch now, Jutsen believes the investment in time and money will pay off because these types of upgrades will eventually become significant assets for homes within 5 to 10 years.

“People are not going to want to buy a home that has a high carbon footprint and obviously associated with that are high energy costs.”

Jon Jutsen spoke to the SwitchedOn Australia podcast. You can hear or download the episode here.