Sydney dad shares how to save $3600 on electricity bills a year
This family of five was running up enormous electricity bills until they decided to try solar but that’s not where their decision ended.
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Sydney-based dad Brenden Laney, 45, knows bill shock all too well.
With him and his wife working full-time from home and three teenagers, it was with some trepidation he would open his energy bills – but when one arrived totalling $900 for a quarter he couldn’t help but feel surprised.
Mr Laney says he could clearly see how the family had racked up such a bill: “We have five laptops, five phones, a bazillion chargers, an air conditioner, three monster TVs, gaming consoles, panel heaters and five heated blankets,” he explains.
“Our three kids also have a rare disease that stops them turning lights off and makes them use three to four outfits a day. We effectively eat trees and produce CO2 on an industrial scale.”
And while having three teens in the house plus him working full-time and his wife, Prue, running her interior design business from home was a major factor, Mr Laney says he also attributed some of the blame for the huge bill to the 1950s house the family live in.
“It’s a split level fibro with a tile roof and no insulation, in summer it’s bloody hot, unbearable even upstairs, and in winter it’s foggy breath cold,” he explains.
“We had a reverse-cycle dinosaur of an air conditioner that kept us from perishing, just, in all honesty sleeping through some of those hot summer nights, death would have been a mercy.”
The prospect of spending nearly $4,000 a year on electricity motivated Mr Laney to renovate the house and during renovations, which included installing a six metre swim spa, he was inspired to look into solar energy.
“I thought, I’m actually spending a lot of money and taking a lot of resources doing this reno, it’d be nice to do something good for the planet,” he says.
“I looked into getting a Tesla battery, but it was out of our budget and I had various discussions with friends about different energy solutions including storing energy in heated underground water banks, but nothing quite fit for us.”
Then, while scrolling through social media one day, Mr Laney saw an advert for ShineHub, which offers ‘subscription-style’ solar plans.
Under these Netflix-style solar subscriptions, which cost $99 a month for a typical three to four bedroom family home, households pay nothing upfront – they just commit to having a solar and battery system installed on their house.
The bulk of power is generated by the solar panels, but any additional energy needing to be drawn from the grid comes from the household’s chosen energy retailer.
“Doing the sums, buying panels and a solar battery never made economic sense for us,” says Mr Laney.
“Looking at a solar subscription was the first time the maths worked, $99 a month compared to $300 a month or even $150 a month on a good quarter, it made sense.”
Mr Laney says his solar subscription is already paying for itself and with it he feels like he’s “saving the world, one spa at a time”.
“Part of our subscription is we get access to an app that monitors our energy usage,” he explains.
“I love looking at it and seeing battery fill and discharge. The solar we have fitted is providing all my peak-period energy and we’re often 100 per cent self-sufficient.”
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