Want to fully electrify your house? Don’t start with a battery

By Saman Gorji, Associate Professor, Renewable Energy and Electrical Engineering, Deakin University
Negin Amini, Lecturer in Environmental Engineering, Deakin University

Many Australians want to go fully electric. But it’s often hard to know where to start. Solar? A home battery? Or quitting gas?

To find the best way to make the shift, we modelled three pathways for a three-bedroom house in Melbourne’s western suburbs.

These pathways show it’s important to do things in the right order. It’s best to start by lowering energy demand through better insulation and stopping draughts, and then switch from gas heating to an efficient reverse-cycle air conditioner. Home batteries should ideally be done last.

What did we do?

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