Smart Energy Home

Will: “The hot water heat pump is great, we’ve never had issues with it. It’s generally pretty hot, pretty instantly. It’s probably about one-third of the cost of heating water in a hot water cylinder.”

Corey: “It’s been great to use – I use it to drive the 54 kilometre roundtrip each day to Dacre for work. It’s a cruisy drive to work, knowing I’m not paying for fuel. The EV has made a massive difference for me, and if I need to use it to go to the gym after work, no problem.”

Will: I use it around town at weekend. The heated seats are quite nice. She’s a good little ride.”

Corey: “It definitely has and I’m excited to see longer range EV cars coming to the market.”

Corey: “We utilised the online app that comes with the Smart EV Charger to set a timer to only charge the EV battery from 12am-5am, which usually is enough to fully charge the 24kWh Nissan Leaf, meaning we can take advantage of off-peak savings.”

Will: “We use the washing machine and dishwasher at night to take advantage of off-peak power rates. Remembering to set timers and delay switches can be an issue. We try to remember to set the timers/delays before heading off to bed, 11pm onwards (off-peak rate time are 11pm-7am) and we’re getting better at it now.”

Will: “While the solar is of course weather dependent, the battery generally fills up pretty fast. Most of this stored energy goes into charging the EV at night. When the home battery is full it switches over to exporting power to the grid. That happens a lot.”

Will: “We were getting a few high power bills at the start because we didn’t really know what we were doing, but it’s better now. It’s been a noticeable change recently. We are saving a lot of money each week. Now we’ve gone through the teething stage. We moved in just as winter started, and it was a pretty cold winter.”

Corey: “That’s the other thing. When we moved in it was more just starting to live properly. When we got a higher bill, we were like, we need to make some changes, because we can see it clear as day on usage figures but once you get charged it on the bill, it sinks in.”

Will: “I like to keep an eye on the dashboard around how much power we are using each day and each month. The monthly usage figure can be an eye-opener.”

Corey: “It’s definitely increased my awareness of electricity usage and of how savings can be made.”

Corey: “Having access to timer technology – to save on little things.”

Will: “The first thing I’d look at doing is the hot water heat pump for heating water.”

Will: “Yeah definitely. You can only manage so much of your electrical usage, but being able to turn wall units on and off remotely would be good.”

Will: “We eat pretty well and find being able to set the delay on the dishwasher really useful”