RSS FeedsWhats the cost of 100% renewable energy for an average home?
I live in Australia and Im wondering how much would it cost (in australian dollars) to have all my household energy come from a renewable source?
Hi Danrad. I’m also in Australia and do get 100% of my energy from renewable sources.
There’s basically two ways of doing it. The first is VERY easy but will never pay itself off, and the second is more expensive and involved to set up but will eventually save you money.
Okay, the first is to simply buy 100% green energy. Very easy, as all you need to do is to ring your energy provider and ask them to switch you over. Origin has probably got the best green energy. 100% renewable energy like this costs around 5c more per KW/h, and an ‘average’ Aussie home uses about 6,000KW/h per year, so it should cost something like $300 per year to be 100% renewable. Easy and cheap. But the catch is, you keep paying that money to stay 100% renewable.
There’s a lot more to Green energy than that too of course, like the politics involved (the government’s climate policy that was rejected last week would’ve pretty much killed off any environmental benefit of green energy…), so you’d want to look into it a bit more before signing up.
The second is by generating your own energy, and again there’s really two main types – Grid connected and off-grid supply.
A grid connect in effect trades energy to and from the grid to get the overall net 100%, and to generate 6,000KW/h per year you’d need to get something like a 4KW system which would cost about $45,000 without rebates (the best rebate we’re ever likely to see ended a couple of months ago, and the new rebate system is FAR inferior from both a financial and environmental perspective). With some rebates you’d get that down to around $38,000 or so. This will save an ‘average’ house about $1,000 per year, and with a Feed-in Tariff (assuming your State has one yet), you’ll earn about $1,500 per year with that, for a total annual benefit of something like $2,500. After 15 years the system will be paid off.
The bottom line for this system is that a grid-connect system should NOT be fitted to an ‘average’ house from a financial point of view. That house is MUCH better off spending money halving its consumption first and then spending $20k or so instead.
An off-grid system needs batteries instead of a grid connection, and will cost about $60,000 – $70,000 mainly because of the batteries needed. This sounds like a lot but is often far cheaper than getting powerlines into a farmhouse in a remote area. The used to be a $25,000 rebate available across Australia for this, but that’s only for WA now.
Hope that helps
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August 25th, 2009
It would depend greatly on a few things, without knowing them any dollar amount would be a total guess and therefore useless.
1. Where you live, (yes you said in Australia but local resources make a huge difference. Just one example off the top of my head, If you are near a water source that would allow you to tap into for geothermal heating that is much cheaper than either horizontal or vertical excavation otherwise needed)
2. Do you have a locality or utility that pays any part of the bill (credit) for energy efficient upgrades.
3. Your area may lend itself well to one type of energy generation or not as well to others. Parts of Australia have better wind/solar/hydro resources than others.
4. This one is very important, what sacrifices will you tolerate, are you willing to install a system of cooling that may not ever "run you out of the house because it is chilly" but instead keeps it at a functional temperature. Are you willing to have a higher maintenance system or not.
Sorry I could not give you a dollar figure like you wanted.
References :
August 25th, 2009
To answer this question we need more info. How much energy do you currently average per month? Take this figure and divide it by 30 days this gets you the avg use per day. Then take that figure and divide it by the avg hours of sunlight per day and you will get the answer.
Example: 1200 KW hours/month/30 days = 40 Kw hours per day
5 avg hours of usable light/day
40/5 = 8 kw/hour
so you would need to install 8000 watts of panels.
Keep in mind over 20 years your panels will lose aprox 10% of their efficiency.
References :
August 25th, 2009
Hi Danrad. I’m also in Australia and do get 100% of my energy from renewable sources.
There’s basically two ways of doing it. The first is VERY easy but will never pay itself off, and the second is more expensive and involved to set up but will eventually save you money.
Okay, the first is to simply buy 100% green energy. Very easy, as all you need to do is to ring your energy provider and ask them to switch you over. Origin has probably got the best green energy. 100% renewable energy like this costs around 5c more per KW/h, and an ‘average’ Aussie home uses about 6,000KW/h per year, so it should cost something like $300 per year to be 100% renewable. Easy and cheap. But the catch is, you keep paying that money to stay 100% renewable.
There’s a lot more to Green energy than that too of course, like the politics involved (the government’s climate policy that was rejected last week would’ve pretty much killed off any environmental benefit of green energy…), so you’d want to look into it a bit more before signing up.
The second is by generating your own energy, and again there’s really two main types – Grid connected and off-grid supply.
A grid connect in effect trades energy to and from the grid to get the overall net 100%, and to generate 6,000KW/h per year you’d need to get something like a 4KW system which would cost about $45,000 without rebates (the best rebate we’re ever likely to see ended a couple of months ago, and the new rebate system is FAR inferior from both a financial and environmental perspective). With some rebates you’d get that down to around $38,000 or so. This will save an ‘average’ house about $1,000 per year, and with a Feed-in Tariff (assuming your State has one yet), you’ll earn about $1,500 per year with that, for a total annual benefit of something like $2,500. After 15 years the system will be paid off.
The bottom line for this system is that a grid-connect system should NOT be fitted to an ‘average’ house from a financial point of view. That house is MUCH better off spending money halving its consumption first and then spending $20k or so instead.
An off-grid system needs batteries instead of a grid connection, and will cost about $60,000 – $70,000 mainly because of the batteries needed. This sounds like a lot but is often far cheaper than getting powerlines into a farmhouse in a remote area. The used to be a $25,000 rebate available across Australia for this, but that’s only for WA now.
Hope that helps
References :
I’m a sustainable house builder.
http://www.energised.com.au