Free Electricity

AS ENERGY bills rise by 20 per cent, meet the man who pays nothing for electricity to power his four-bedroom house.

Warren Yates even managed to score a $10 credit from EnergyAustralia for selling electricity back to the grid - he is believed to be the only person in NSW to have done so - after covering his roof with a three-kilowatt solar power system.

While average households will spend an extra $182 a year on electricity bills after last Wednesday's price rise, the Yates family home in Mosman creates more energy than it consumes.

When domestic solar feed-in tariff rates rise from 27 cents for every kilowatt hour not used, to a predicted 60 cents next January, Mr Yates estimates he will earn more money from electricity providers.

"I have become an energy geek," the 65-year-old engineering academic said. "I bought an appliance that measures how much electricity each appliance consumes so we can work out the most effective things to do for the least cost. It's become a game to minimise energy use without sacrificing comfort."

Mr Yates spent $30,000 installing the 18 solar panels, but he managed to claim $8000 back through the Howard government's solar power rebate scheme.

"At first, we weren't self-sufficient; it took us a while to get our energy consumption down," he said.

Turning off the family computers overnight, running the dishwasher every couple of days and refusing to turn on the heating "unless we have visitors" were some of the tactics the family used to reduce consumption.

Most domestic solar electricity systems are only one or 1.5 kilowatts, which Mr Yates believes is too small to generate enough power to sell back to the grid.

He installed a larger - and more expensive - system to power the household and faced the roof panels west to capture the afternoon sun.

Most households with solar power face the panels north to catch the sun all day, but Mr Yates said west-facing panels caught more intense afternoon sunlight, helping to power peak energy consumption in the evening.

Renewable energy firm Green Project said that as government policies covering grid feed-in tariffs and solar incentives improved, there would be more "net winners". Solar electricity "can put you ahead of the game to make sure you don't have to pay high energy bills", said the firm's head of operations, Esther Bailey.

EnergyAustralia's energy efficiency expert, Paul Myors, said most households with solar panels would need to significantly reduce energy consumption before earning money back.

"If you only have a one-kilowatt system, you will probably only generate around 20 to 30 per cent of the electricity an average household would use," he said.

Energy consultant Bruce Taper, who created BASIX, the Building Sustainability Index, agreed households wanting to sell energy back to power companies needed to become frugal with their electricity consumption.