Switching Up Hot Water for a Cleaner, Cheaper Energy Future
Aussie households could be sitting on a goldmine when it comes to unlocking more renewable energy and slashing power bills – and it’s all about how we heat our water.
A new report from The Australia Institute and Buildings Alive has found that by tweaking the way we run our off-peak hot water systems, we could free up a massive amount of clean, cheap energy that’s currently going to waste.
See, back in the day, these off-peak systems were set up to soak up excess power from coal-fired plants at night. But these days, the problem has flipped – we’ve got daytime surges of solar energy that the grid struggles to handle, leading to a whole lot of that renewable power getting cut off.
The solution? Shift those off-peak hot water systems to run during the day, when the sun is pumping. Research reckons this simple change could unlock around 4,000 gigawatt-hours of flexible power demand per year – equivalent to nearly 40% of all the gas-fired generation on the east coast grid.
“This is the low-hanging fruit of the energy transition,” says Buildings Alive boss Dr. Craig Roussac. “There are so many easy, cost-effective ways we can shift energy use to support more renewables, and hot water is one of the most obvious.”
Modelling by the University of Technology Sydney backs this up, finding that daytime off-peak hot water could have provided around 4,015 GWh of flexible demand back in 2020 – almost exactly matching the amount of renewable power that had to be switched off that year.
Looking ahead to 2040, the researchers estimate this could grow to a massive 18,300 GWh per year. That’s the equivalent of billions in household bill savings, by letting that cheap solar power flow straight into homes instead of getting curtailed.
All up, it’s a no-brainer solution that state and federal pollies should be jumping on, according to the report. Shift those hot water systems to the daylight hours, and we can help the grid handle more renewables while slashing energy costs for Aussie homeowners.
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