How Ken and Corrine turned their home into a powerhouse

Ken: Hi folks. We're Ken and Corinne, and welcome to our energy self-sufficient home.

We loved our home, but it was costing us a lot of money to run and we wanted to cut our bills. We are saving a lot of money each year, probably about $6,000 a year, which is very significant.

We started small. Uh, the first step was to put in this induction cooktop in our kitchen. We knew it was going to be safer, faster and cheaper to run.

So we put our first solar system in 13 years ago on the back roof. I haven't paid an electricity bill in over a year. I am producing more than enough solar power, not just to run my house, but to also charge my battery.

Renewable energy allows you to entirely electrify your home. So we decided to build our own reliable, low cost power system, and this is it at the side of the house.

The key to doing a setup like this is to make sure that you use reputable providers. So everything we have is a well established product from well established companies.

I think the greatest benefit is being self-reliant in energy. You know that if there's a blackout or any problem, you don't have to worry about it.

We replaced our gas hot water system with a heat pump. Now, of course that we are running it all off solar. The bill is zero, so we get our hot water completely free.

Here we are in my garage and I'm carrying my own personal 'bowser', and if I plug it into the car like this, we can charge the car up from the solar panels on the roof at no cost whatsoever.

I'm saving at a minimum $2,000 a year having got rid of our old gas guzzler and replaced it with this magnificent car.

So why would you buy a petrol car when you can buy a much cheaper car that doesn't break down and costs half as much to run or nothing to run if you've got solar panels?

We get to control our energy system completely as part of a VPP, so I can decide when I want to sell power into the grid, or I can leave it to my provider to make that decision for me.

I can also buy power from the grid when it's very cheap and I can sell it back into the grid when the feed-in tariff is much higher. And this shows that between the 8th of June and the 25th of July, I made $278.41 selling power into the grid.

But the other great thing is, is we're not contributing in any way to carbon emissions. Renewable energy is wonderful stuff. It's the way to save the planet and to save money on your energy bills.