Pictured: Alex Blyth (with Saffron) and Megs Hermann (with Ginger).
When Alex Blyth and Megs Hermann first moved into Enfield St, Marrickville, seven years ago, they were super keen on installing solar PV but the solar installers who came round to quote advised them not to bother. Alex and Megs were told that because they both worked full-time and so were away all day, solar didn’t make financial sense because their power use was mostly at night.
Alex and Megs actually weren’t so concerned about the financial side of the deal; they’ve always been strong environmentalists and wanted to go solar for the planet. But the installers so put them off they didn’t proceed.
Now fast forward to January 2020. “It has always been in the back of our heads,” Megs says, “but then the bushfires happened and I was like ‘I want to do this now!’. And I was also very curious about batteries, as well.”
Alex added: “We try to do everything environmentally aware. We don’t do everything perfectly but we compost, and we separate all of our recycling and try to do right with all of that. And then the bushfires happened. And that got me stressed out, really concerned.”
So this time they were determined to go solar to cut their carbon emissions.
Alex, an IT engineer for computer company Oracle, and Megs, who works with the events team at UTS, saw that Inner West Community Energy was holding one of its popular Solar Information Nights at the Petersham Bowling Club in early February. Alex came along.
All his questions were answered. We advised that, for now, they were better off investing in as big a solar PV system as they could afford, and holding off on a battery until the price came down.
As you can see, they took that advice! They’ve built a huge system, one of the biggest in the Inner West Community Energy fleet – 33 solar panels, making it a 10.725 kilowatt system.
“We’ll be generating so much power our bills are going to be negligible,” Megs says. “It’s going to be a massive cost-saving measure because the price of power is going to keep going up.”
The system was installed in mid-March. This week, Alex was in his 11th week of lockdown because Oracle put all employees globally into lockdown very early. So of course his daytime power use has jumped significantly. The advice those solar installers gave seven years ago was wrong then but has proved especially wrong these past few months.
Alex’s advice to other Inner Westies considering installing solar? “Take the plunge,” he says. “I”m super happy with the whole thing. As soon as you do it, a weight is lifted off your shoulders. Everything we’re doing is now guilt-free as far as our power use goes.”
Megs says: “We’re so happy and everything went really smoothly. We thought it was absolutely worth the investment.”
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we can’t run Solar Information Nights. But we hope to be back in the not-too-distant future. If you’d like to attend one, message us or text me (0407 663 125) and we’ll let you know when the next one is happening.
- Gavin Gilchrist, IWCE project manager: 0407 663 125