Healthy Home, Healthy Wallet: Why we got off gas
Mark and Natalie were one of the first 60 households to participate in the Electrify 2515 Community Pilot. They replaced all their gas appliances with electric ones and added solar and a battery. Now they are saving money on their energy bills, live in a healthier home, and are contributing the the community effort to reduce carbon emissions.
Mark: “As a GP I've become acutely aware of the interplay of all the things that contribute to good health. Our environment plays a really key role in that space. When we moved in here, the house had a number of major appliances that were reliant on gas and so we were using LPG tanks, burning fumes and and LPG gas in the home. So from a health perspective, I was quite keen to move away from it.
“I first heard about Electrify 2515 about three years ago. You know, justifying getting rid of your appliances and reconnecting things kind of just for the sake of replacing the appliances is, is a tricky thing, and (you) would probably wait until you had a budget for it and so forth. To do it as part of a broader strategy for the community gave us a little bit more purpose in switching over those appliances.”
Natalie: “So we changed over our hot water that was gas, also our ducted heating and our stovetop. We put the biggest unit we could of solar panels on our roof and we're planning to put a second battery in as well so we can just max out in terms of how much we can have here.
Mark: “My biggest reservations were around the induction cooktop specifically, but the power of the heating is unparalleled, way more powerful than the gas system that we had. And the level of control that you can have when you're cooking is again like nothing I've ever experienced before.
Natalie: “So my new favourite app is my solar app which shows me what's being generated by the solar panels and then where it's going into the battery and and then how much we're putting back into the grid.
“So the bills back before we had solar and our battery, they were $1200 to $1300 a quarter, but now, our bills have gone down to $90 a quarter.”
Mark: “I think it just makes sense, you know, on all the levels. It's good for us, it's good for your wallet, it's good for the environment and I think it'd be great to see everyone have access to that.”
