Living the Electric Future: A conversation with Renee Robinson
Podcast: Download (Duration: 1 hour and 6 minutes)
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You can listen above or on your favourite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Subscribe: Spotify | Apple | RSS | More
You can listen above or on your favourite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Show notes
The conversation delves into the practical aspects of living sustainably, transitioning to an all-electric home, the challenges of electric vehicle ownership, cost and efficiency of electric vehicles, government policies and environmental impact, solar energy and grid feeding tariffs, solar batteries and community initiatives, electric car prices and environmental responsibility, and the environmental impact of government decisions. The discussion also highlights the importance of promoting sustainability and community efforts. The conversation covers the rise of solar energy, sustainable home practices, community solutions for electrification, challenges in Australian housing, advocacy for sustainability, debunking sustainability myths, taking action for sustainability, and an electric vehicle tour. The discussion emphasizes the importance of government incentives, personal investment, long-term benefits, rainwater tanks, waste reduction, community-owned solar farms, housing quality, energy efficiency, activism, education, electric vs. gas cooking, affordability, government support, incremental changes, and environmental impact.
Takeaways
Takeaways
- Living sustainably requires practical steps and a deliberate approach.
- Electric vehicle ownership comes with challenges such as infrastructure limitations and cost considerations. Government incentives drive solar energy adoption
- Sustainable home practices reduce environmental impact
Connect with Renee Robinson
Today I’m speaking with Renee Robinson — someone who doesn’t just talk about sustainability, she actually lives it. Renee drives an electric car, powers her home with her own electricity generation, and has taken the kind of practical steps most of us only daydream about. She’s proof that an electrified, low-emissions lifestyle isn’t some futuristic fantasy; it’s happening right now in an ordinary Victorian home.
Her efforts caught the attention of the Victorian Government, and in November 2024 her house became the launch site for the State Electricity Commission’s new electric-home planner pilot, with Minister Lily D’Ambrosio and the Member for Eureka turning up to showcase what’s possible. In February 2025 Renee was selected as one of 20 women from around Australia to be part of the 1 Million Women enjoy to Canberra to convince political to support the electrification of one million homes across Australia. Today, Renee joins me to cut through the hype and talk honestly about what works, what doesn’t, and what it really takes to live sustainably in a world that’s still playing catch-up.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/peppercorn_mill/
Her efforts caught the attention of the Victorian Government, and in November 2024 her house became the launch site for the State Electricity Commission’s new electric-home planner pilot, with Minister Lily D’Ambrosio and the Member for Eureka turning up to showcase what’s possible. In February 2025 Renee was selected as one of 20 women from around Australia to be part of the 1 Million Women enjoy to Canberra to convince political to support the electrification of one million homes across Australia. Today, Renee joins me to cut through the hype and talk honestly about what works, what doesn’t, and what it really takes to live sustainably in a world that’s still playing catch-up.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/peppercorn_mill/
Transcript of episode
Amra (00:00.0)
Welcome to Amra's Armchair Anecdotes. I'm Amra Payalich, writer, teacher and storyteller. Pull up a chair and let's dive into stories about writing, life and lessons learned, sharing wisdom from my armchair to yours. You can find the episode show notes, your free episode handouts and my how-to guides at amrapayalich.com slash podcast.
Amra (00:30.082)
Now it's time to dive in.
Amra (00:33.87)
Welcome to our Amra's Chair Anecdotes. Today I'm speaking with Renee Robinson, who's actually a long time friend. But she also doesn't just talk about sustainability, she lives it. She drives an electric car, she powers her home with her own electricity generation, and has taken the kind of practical steps most of us only daydream about. She's proved that an electrified, low emissions lifestyle isn't some futuristic fantasy. It's happening right now in an ordinary Victorian
Amra (01:04.656)
home and we are in that home right now. So her efforts caught the attention of the Victorian government and in November 2024 her house became the launch site for the State Electricity Commission's new electric home planner pilot with Minister Lily D'Ambrosio and the member for Eureka turning up to showcase what's possible today. In February this year she was selected as one of the 20 women from around Australia. to be part of the 1 million women envoy to Canberra to convince politicians to support the electrification of 1 million homes across Australia. So she's going to cut through the hype and talk honestly about what works, what doesn't and what it really takes to live sustainably in a world that's playing catch up.
Renee (01:53.966)
Yes. Thank you. Thank you much. Thank you for having me and welcome to my home.
Amra
Yes. You've been here many times. I have been here many times but it's nice to come in and do this focus. Yeah. So I'm calling Renee the environmentalist and this is what this episode is about.
Renee
I like it. I like that title.
Amra
So can we just can you walk us through your decision to go all electric at home? What sparked it? And did you always think about sustainability or was there a particular moment that convinced you to make the switch?
Renee (02:23.92)
Really good questions. So probably what sparked me to go all electric was the black summer and feeling like most people across Australia just incredibly powerless in the face of so much devastation and destruction seeing all the animals dying. Sorry, Enzo, popping down, popping into
Renee (02:53.84)
down. It just, yeah, it was absolutely devastating. think a third of Australia's national forests went up in smoke. We lost so much wildlife, losses. I, like so many other people, felt incredibly helpless. And I realized that rather than looking at it on a big scale, I could narrow it down, narrow my focus down to just my household and try and do what little I could to help the big picture, if you like. Does that make sense?
Amra (03:23.76)
Yeah. So. Yeah. I mean, you've always been, we've been friends for a very long time. I think it's like going on three decades now. Yeah. And you have always been environmental in your efforts, but you have been a lot more conscious and a lot more deliberate in the past few years.
Renee (03:53.614)
Correct. Yeah. So it was for me, it was, I also did it on a budget. So I wanted to prove that you can do it on a very, very limited budget. I had gas heating and gas cooking, and I just decided I was going to get rid of those appliances and put in electric appliances. it was really, yeah, was easy to do those switches. It cost me, I think,
Renee (04:23.568)
$50 to get a plumber in to cap the gas and remove both of those appliances. I Ended up rebuilding my own kitchen as well. So it's a beautiful picture Thank you using YouTube so I I didn't have a big budget as I said and Once the electric cooktop went in I decided okay. I'm not going to leave my 1980s retro kitchen, you know
Renee (04:53.488)
in there as well so I just ripped it all out and rebuilt it and then the electric vehicle though took a little bit longer and more preparation so I ended up buying my EV through the Goodcar company which they sourced their vehicles from Japan secondhand so it was a Nissan Leaf, it still is a Nissan Leaf sitting in my driveway which I can show
Renee (05:23.408)
you after. I ended up just having to, my car was on its last leg so I decided I wasn't going to continue with the petrol vehicle and I just took that leap and bought a second hand EV from the Good Car Company three years ago now. And like a lot of people who do the electric cars do the hybrid whether you can do the petrol and electricity you are totally electric.
Renee (05:53.408)
electric so it was a big leap of faith because we didn't my parents live 300 kilometres from me and my vehicle doesn't have a 300 kilometre range so I actually had to wait another year before EV charges came were in place between where I live in Belan and my parents up in Horsham before I could actually drive my car up to visit my parents so I was getting lifts from my brother and yeah using other arrangements to
Renee (06:23.258)
get up to see them in the interim. So that was frustrating. I realised that, you know, there was definitely a lack of infrastructure. But I realised that after I bought it, it would have been fine in the city with all the alternative public transport and everything like that. But in rural Victoria, which is where I live, it wasn't an ideal situation. So it was a big leap of faith. And Murrableshire is the council that I live in and
Renee (06:53.258)
to this day we still don't have any V charges so it's a bit of a black hole for EV charging. in terms of some practical things when you're wanting to go somewhere you have to do research you have to check where there are like what's the process? Yeah so you can download the apps you can I downloaded Charge Fox and EV charging apps which are the main charges and so I have to
Renee (07:23.088)
basically look at where the charges are situated and figure out my route. So I go down to Mornington Peninsula a fair bit to house it for a friend and I rather than go through the city, I will go down to through Geelong and to Queenscliff and Queenscliff has a charger Geelong doesn't and then I think Geelong does now actually but I generally charge at Queenscliff.
Renee (07:53.168)
and then catch the ferry over. So it's more expensive to do it that way but it's a much more pleasant less less anxiety inducing kind of trip if I do take the ferry and that but another consideration you have to factor in is elevation. So coming back I can't make it back on the same journey on one charge so I've actually got to stop and make another stop at Bannetburnen. charge because it's all uphill.
Amra (08:22.928)
Yeah. you gotten into any trouble until you figured that out?
Renee
I have run out of charge four times. so yeah. So one of the key things that I did when I first got the car was to get roadside assist and make sure that that was covered. But each time has been within a six kilometre radius of my home. so it was quite good. Yeah, didn't quite get there once was actually coming back from your place.
Renee (08:52.848)
I know, I know and I ran out of charge two kilometers away so I could have walked home but yeah it just didn't make it. Coming from Backers Marsh up to Belan I think is about a 15 kilometer incline and I was just watching my charge get less, less, less, less, less, less and yeah didn't make it. So I haven't, you do learn those lessons early on and I do encourage people to get
Renee (09:22.768)
roadside assist but the EVs that are available nowadays particularly the Chinese models like the BYDs and the Cherries and stuff they have amazing range 300 kilometre ranges up to 600 kilometre ranges so they really don't have to rely on charging stations as much as the rest of us and another thing that you do you can't predict but
Renee (09:52.688)
Often if you get to a charging station, there's usually only one or two. And if you've got a damn Tesla plugged in, they take over an hour to charge and you know that you'll be waiting there for an hour for them to get off the damn charger. yeah, so that happened to you once when you're coming to the house. Yeah, it did. I'm here, but I suck. I know, I know. And he was actually plugged in for I think two hours. And yeah, I was just, yeah, I was furious at him when he came back.
Renee (10:22.608)
That's another consideration because we don't have enough infrastructure to keep pace with the electric vehicle take up. hence why a lot of people still opt for hybrids so that they have that backup. Because in Australia, especially without distances, it can be really tricky. So probably, you know, in my situation, it's probably if I want to go a long distance, if I want to head over to
Renee (10:52.548)
Melakuta for instance, which is what, eight hours away, I would hire a vehicle. I would not, I wouldn't rely on public transport. would, yeah, I'd actually hire a vehicle to go on that.
Amra (11:06.85)
Yeah, that sort of trip as well. And I was just wondering in terms of cost effectiveness, so you still have to pay for the charging?
Renee
So if you're on the EV charges, it's really, really affordable. It's really cost effective. So, you know, I I might pay ten dollars to charge my car fully. and that's not a lot compared to petrol prices.
Amra (11:24.544)
And how long is that like running for in terms of time?
Renee
Because I've only got a 30 kilowatt battery which is on the smaller range and that's why I've got a low range. It's really fast so I can charge in 30 minutes whereas your Teslas which have the longer range, their batteries are a lot bigger than mine so they might be 60 kilowatt or something and that's why they've got to plug in for about an hour to recharge.
Renee (11:54.528)
fully. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, so it's time. And like when you have a full battery, how many kilometres are you able to travel on that full battery? It varies probably up to 150 kilometres but highway driving is the worst. That uses up lot. Yeah, it uses a lot of energy. What's actually better for EVs is city driving. So they call it regenerative braking. So every time you slow down or brake
Renee (12:25.907)
you're kind of charging your battery at the same time so it's much more efficient to drive your EVs around the city than it is on the highway. And what about servicing and stuff like that? Good question because I actually haven't gotten it properly serviced yet just basically just you know the wheels and the alignment they're the only service I haven't had the battery serviced but because it's a Nissan
Renee (12:54.338)
if I just take it probably to a Nissan dealership and I think there's a lot more qualified
Amra (13:01.134)
mechanics now that do deal with these. I think they have to, they have to keep pace with the take up as well. One of the things early on in Victoria as well was when the Andrews government introduced the road use attacks for electric vehicles as well. So I used to have to take a photo of my odometer and every time I registered my vehicle and show how much I'd used it,
Renee (13:31.088)
what distances I traveled and I think they charged me two cents, two point something cents per kilometer. So that was really expensive. That ended up being really expensive, particularly if you do a lot of traveling in it. And that was overturned by the federal courts. One of the EV drivers actually took that policy to the federal courts and it was overturned and we were paid back by the Victorians.
Renee (14:01.038)
government because they realised that that was a law that could only be that was a tariff or a tax that could only be introduced federally it couldn't be introduced by the state government but now the Albanese government's talking about introducing a variation on that which is going to be a bit of a disincentive I think for other people to take up electric vehicles.
Amra
What's your theory about why they're doing the disincentives?
Renee (14:30.968)
The theory is that I think this government's been really disappointing unfortunately in terms of their sustainability and environmental policies. I think that I had high hopes for them and after going to Canberra as well in February I thought that they'd be a lot more proactive than they are but the fact that I think just a few weeks after they won the election in a landslide that they approved woodside mining on the northwest coast of Australia and you know
Renee (15:11.694)
basically didn't care about, you know, cultural art, rock art and, you know, the cultural ownership of that area as well and the impacts on that. But, you know, I find that this government's really lacking in ambition for environmental policies and sustainability. And they should be ambitious because they want in the landslide. It's going to take a
Renee (15:41.708)
long time before the opposition can kind of recover and build those numbers to even be you know in the running for government and that you know this is this was an opportunity for them to be incredibly ambitious and I feel that they have just gone the opposite way they're playing it safe but they're also kind of yeah they're not
Amra (16:06.958)
Yeah, I don't know. It's just been really disheartening, I think. I think one of the things when I talk to people and I don't really know much about solar energy, but one of the things that sort of come up, especially with people who come from Europe or other parts of the world, one of the things that they talk about is how in other parts of the world there is a lot more solar networks. Yeah, renewable. Yes. And that Australia, which is, you know, the southern country, the one where we get the most
Amra (16:36.912)
sun, that's what we're known for. And yet it seems that there is not much of that going on and that there is lobbying happening by coal companies, by companies who are benefiting from the non-renewable energy. The Gina Rinehart, etc. Because even, mean, it helped me, think that I've
Amra (17:06.832)
about this right, but there was a point where you were being paid for the electricity that you generated and it went back into the grid. Finning tariff, And then they started charging you for giving electricity back into the grid. And I just explained that and then let's talk about that. I know, I know, right? It's just, it You're generating electricity and that you're like, well.
Renee (17:34.606)
Release it. I'll give you some to use. Yes. Other customers. We're not going to pay you. Yeah. Charge you. know for the electricity that I'm generating. So I've probably got a 4.2 kilowatt system on my roof.
Renee (17:52.398)
And I don't have a battery at this stage because I haven't been able to afford to get a solar battery to store my own energy. That is on my wishlist, but again, it comes down to money. So fully electrified home, 4.2 kilowatt system on the roof, EV in the garage. So what happened? It entirely comes down to your providers. So I've been trying a few different electricity.
Renee (18:22.452)
providers and this one in particular, Amber, was known for being really good for people who fully electrified their home and had electric vehicles and that and I was encouraged to kind of sign up with them. So I did give them a go but that lasted probably about six months because I realised that they were actually charging me for the solar that I was at the
Renee (18:52.412)
energy that I was producing but not using myself because I was at work or I might have been away for a week or something like that so they were charging me for the excess energy that was feeding back into the grid. So way back probably I don't know 15 or 20 years ago the early adopters of solar actually had a feeding tariff of about 60 cents 61 cents per kilowatt that they generated so they would make
Renee (19:22.312)
money from their solar energy. So if you had that excess and went into the bridge you would get the... So they weren't making money so they weren't getting they were getting no bills, no electricity bills and they were actually generating electricity credit on top of that because the feeding tariff was so high. Compared to today the feeding tariff if you're lucky is three cents a kilowatt.
Amra (19:49.038)
So what happens with the electricity bills? Like, do you have to pay in electricity bills now?
Renee
Yeah, I do. I do. So we all have service charges. So that's approximately one dollar a day. So you're always going to be paying about thirty, thirty one dollars a month in service charge. And I do. I do still get electricity bills. I'm probably averaging between one hundred and one hundred and fifty a month because I, I
Renee (20:19.002)
use a lot of electricity because of my EV. I charge my EV in my garage. I don't have a specific EV charger in my garage. just charge it on...
Renee (20:31.374)
with your general plug and it's on trickle charge. So it charges approximately 10 % an hour. So I do drain a lot of electricity. So I'm probably spending between 100 and 150 a month on electricity still bearing in mind that 30, $31 of that is a service charge. Yeah. It's still though, pretty good. Better off in terms of petrol and electricity. And I've got no gas bill.
Renee (21:01.328)
So if I was still using gas, I'd still get charged gas bills on top of that. And one of the things I did when I got my gas appliances removed was I abolished my gas meter. It's called abolish because if you leave your meter there, even though you're not, you don't have gas appliances and you're not connected, they still charge you a service charge to the property. So you're still going to be charged, you know, that one or $2.
Renee (21:31.248)
day to have your gas, you know, yeah. the only way to get rid of that was to abolish my meter. And one of the things that I found with that was I had to go to the ombudsman because the, wanted to charge me $800 to remove my meter. So another disincentive by the gas companies, you know, to get off gas. Whereas now I went to the ombudsman and
Renee (22:01.208)
I ended up, I think, paying $60 for a call out fee for them to remove it. But I had to actually go to the ombudsman to get that to happen. now Lily D'Ambrosio, the Minister for Climate and Energy.
Renee (22:16.33)
energy for the Victorian government said that they've actually capped that and they're stopping electrical gas companies from doing that from charging you know absorbent amounts for people to get off gas so it is your yeah there's fail safes now in place where you're not going to be exploited by gas companies and prevented from doing that. just wanted to go back to the solar batteries how much do they cost? Now they've got really good rebates apparently
Renee (22:46.224)
Now federal government rebates, I think now is a very good time to to buy a battery it used to cost about $10,000 to get a battery and I think now with rebates it just depends on the size of your battery the KVAs I don't know a lot about that engineering kind of specifications of them, but I think that with the rebates it could cost you out of pocket maybe
Renee (23:16.144)
$3,000 or something like that. So it's actually a better time to get them and you can pay them off and everything. yeah, I will start looking into that a bit further, I think. Something interesting with the SEC, which the department who came here to launch the SEC planner back in November last year, they're wanting to actually make Belen a pilot town for
Renee (23:46.064)
batteries and solar so they're going to we haven't looked at the contracts yet but I've been through to a few information sessions and they're going to give us a battery for the first year but then there's a few little loopholes with that though they're going to they control where the energy that's stored in the battery from it my solar panels is going to be diverted so if there's power outages they
Renee (24:15.984)
might not let me run my household on it. They might divert it back to the grid or do things like that. yeah, so I'm interested to learn a little bit more about that program. I think they've still got to iron out a few of the little loopholes, but it will be, if successful, it'll be a good pilot program that can be rolled out to other rural community towns that do suffer frequent power outages or brownouts, I think they call it.
Renee (24:45.904)
which is not very... I'm not used to that term.
Amra
That's a term I've heard a lot on American TV. Especially in New York. I have a lot of brownouts. Especially during the New York heat.
Renee
Oh my gosh, it kind of reminds me of that our poop cruise or something.
Amra
Don't give me the poop cruise. I'm avoiding that documentary even though it wants to suck me in. I just also wanted to ask...
Amra (25:14.998)
And you know, I know that you bought your car a little while ago, but prices of electric cars versus regular cars, like what's going on there now?
Renee
they've completely gone down. Now's a really good time to buy EVs. if I had the opportunity, if I had a crystal ball, I probably would have held out for another couple of years because now you can buy a brand new car for less than I paid for my second second hand car with a better range and stuff. I yeah, it's one of those things though that you've got
Renee (25:44.932)
to, you know, it's...
Renee (25:48.78)
because I was an early adopter of EVs and that type of thing, it's helped new buyers now with prices and it's helped put infrastructure in place for these new electric vehicle drivers as well. it's one of those things that you kind of weigh up. Personally, I would have been better off just delaying it a few years if I could, but I'm still pleased that I
Renee (26:18.824)
to make that switch when I did because I think it's an important kind of example for other people to invest in, personally invest in electrifying their homes.
Amra (26:41.594)
Why should we care? Why do we need to do that? We've got petrol, we've got electricity.
Renee
Environmental emissions. The fact that basically we wanted to get to net zero by 2040, which now I think our federal government's also walking that back because they've approved Woodside, which can operate for another 20 or so years. They've kind of lost them.
Amra
What is Woodside?
Renee (27:11.628)
Woodside is around and I think it's an oil refinery up on the northwest shelf of Australia so yeah, it's It's a yeah gas gas refinery oil refinery. It's something it's it but it's one of those We've Australia's reaching natural resources and it's one of those Resources that they're going to basically it won't be for Australians to use it will
Renee (27:41.37)
be sold overseas. it never is by the way, it never is. and I think Japan is the main user for it. Don't quote me on any of this because I'm not quite across all of it but I know that it's bad and yeah apparently I think that the main buyer is Japan for it's probably gas not oil, I think it's gas and Japan had actually is on selling it.
Renee (28:11.234)
for a profit. So it's a ludicrous decision and it's a ludicrous, you know, yeah, it's something that our government never should have done. just, doesn't benefit us at all financially or, and it doesn't benefit the environment in any way, shape or form. in the meantime, you know, you can see all of these severe weather events that are a result from.
Amra (28:41.244)
I like, I can remember many years ago, there was a lot more movement in councils and, different areas about getting everyone environmentally sustainable. remember going to, I mean, this was when we had the water deficits, our catchment areas. And so going to workshops about, you know, sustainability. And then it was about composting and trying to.
Amra (29:11.684)
you know, look at. So there was, it felt like it was a lot more on the agenda. And now it's kind of gone off and it's not something that is being promoted as much and it's not something that, you certainly it's not in my consciousness, you know, when I think day to day. I actually had a moment the other day where I was like chopping all these vegetables and I was like, oh, I should look at composting again when I've got all
Amra (29:40.974)
these things and that's what made me think why aren't we doing these things anymore because yeah was really big thing about everyone trying to sort of think about sustainability and I know people at work, someone who built their house and he does have the solar battery and he does have rainwater tanks and you know he's really made an effort to be sustainable and to you know bring his costs down also but also for the benefit of the environment and so you
Renee (30:10.864)
That's the thing. It's a big personal investment and when we were in Canberra it was really interesting because we didn't get to meet Prime Minister Albanese but we did get to meet his Chief of Staff and one of their arguments was that Australia already has a 40 % take up of solar panels and so we're tracking really well compared to the rest of the world, not Europeans because they're
Renee (30:40.784)
well advanced. you know, compared they're not the rest of the world. We're not counting them as the world. Exactly, exactly. But what my argument to him was actually that wasn't government investment though, that was personal investment. So that was community led action. So people invested personally in getting solar panels put on their roofs to try and help the environment. there was, yeah, there wasn't a lot
Renee (31:10.704)
of incentive from governments. There may have been a few state government grants around at the time, but you know, they dried up pretty quickly. So it's basically people just taking that personal step and investing in it means that more than 40 % of households across Australia now have solar on their roofs. at the beginning of 2021, I believe, it was
Renee (31:40.624)
the or 20, no, beginning of 2022, the Victorian government became leaders in policy that meant that no new house builds in Victoria can be connected to gas. So the gas industry is really hurting at the moment. And that's why you're seeing all the lobbyists and all of that type of thing happen as well because
Renee (32:10.764)
across Victoria if you're building a new home you cannot connect to gas so you have no alternative to be connected to electricity. And also like in terms of you so did you do the personal investment in terms of doing the solar panels? I did I'm still paying it off so it was a five year paying it off over five years so I've got about a year left to pay off so that's on top of like so I'm probably paying another hundred and fifty dollars a month on top of my a hundred to a hundred and fifty dollars
Renee (32:40.464)
electricity just to pay off my solar. so you're still sort of and then when you've paid that off that's when you'll be getting the That's when hopefully the benefits and that yeah but one thing that one of the installers, one of the quotes that I got, what he told me was really kind of it just made sense and it was really he just said if you're living in the property for more than five years then invest in solar.
Renee (33:10.384)
but if you're not, you won't reap the benefits until after that five years. So it's something that you've got to weigh up as well. if you're planning on selling or moving or whatever, it's probably, in the next couple of years, it's probably not a good investment. Save it for your new home. But if you are planning on staying in your house long-term, then it is a really good investment because it is a long-term investment.
Renee (33:40.304)
Yeah I do I've got a couple of rainwater tanks and that was another state government policy I think about 20 years ago that you had to have them either connected to your toilets or your laundry when we had the the drought and the water shortages in the 2000s so that was new builds had to it was was law that you had to have rainwater tanks and then they had to be connected to either your flushing toilets or your laundry to reduce your water usage.
Renee (34:10.504)
and stuff so mine are connected to the toilet. So you're really, the other thing that you've done over the years that I just also think is worthwhile talking about, you take your own cutlery, you take your own straw, you have like a little pack and so I emulated you where I bought some of those things and so you try also not to contribute to that sort of waste. So what are some other things that you can think of off the top of your head that people could
Renee (34:40.184)
be doing. Yeah well that was one of the things that they talked about with composting so that you're not contributing to general waste and you're actually composting all of your food and all of that so I think it reduces your general waste by about a third. If you can do that composting is really useful. I've actually got like a little thing that I might be able to give you when you go home it's one of those...
Renee (35:08.118)
trying to think of the name of it, but it was one where Bokashi buckets. It's one of the ones where renters use or people with no gardens that you can dig your compost into and you add some Bokashi mix to it and it breaks down. It's like enzymes or something and it breaks down the food and then you've got like your worm weight, your liquid fertilizer from it. you can use that.
Renee (35:38.032)
you dilute it, don't put it on straight, but dilute it with water and your plants just love it. And then the waste, if you've got a community garden near you, you can take it to the community garden to compost, or you can just bring it back to me or you've got a bit of a garden. you'll be able to dig up.
Amra
And now that I am doing a lot more vegetables and doing a lot more cooking, I'm actually looking at how much vegetable
Amra (36:07.952)
And I'm like, this is something that I should be doing with it, rather than putting it in the bin. Because we do the recycling, we've got the different bins and stuff, so we try and do our little things. And it's like, that's one step further that we can...
Renee
You might, because you go through a lot of veggies and fruit and stuff, you might benefit from a bigger, just a general composting system and stuff. I think that you've probably got the room for that rather than the Bokashi. Bokashi is really just for a pastime.
Renee (36:37.881)
apartment uses and you know because it's Japanese because she you know sounds Japanese it is Japanese yeah and it was was designed for you know tiny apartment living and that type of thing. One thing when we're up in Canberra actually it was interesting because the 20 women in our envoy we did have people who lived in social housing and lots of renters as well we had across the age ranges and they were saying
Renee (37:07.832)
well what can we do because we can't actually electrify our home personally. You know what sort of things can we do to you know fully electrify our homes and some of the solutions were really really interesting because I know that some have invested in community-owned solar farms. I think once at Haystacks, Google it and yeah that was a community-owned solar farm that people were able to invest in.
Renee (37:37.722)
So they get returns on the energy generated by that solar farm and they're able to pay down their energy bill. So I think you have to belong to a specific energy company and all of the solar input gets calculated by that energy company and depending on the amount of shares you've got in that solar farm.
Renee (38:07.632)
field, yeah, you get that deducted from your energy bill. So that's pretty cool. So that's solution for apartment living and for renters as well. So you can still benefit from electrification, but you've got to kind of think outside the square. also, you don't have to use that gas cooktop. You can go out and buy,
Renee (38:38.911)
I think Kmart's single induction cooktop that you just plug in, I think they vary between $50 and $90. So you can actually buy an induction cooktop and you can just put a chopping block over your gas cooktop if you want and just use that to prepare your meal and just cook on your induction cooktop. So you can get a single or a double. So that's another alternative that you can look at.
Renee (39:07.472)
but it is electrifying your home and keeping your bills low. So there are solutions that are out there for renters and people who do live in social housing to help you benefit. And I think also the federal government was saying that they are investing a lot of money now into...
Renee (39:32.734)
in terms of social housing, you know, making sure that they've got proper insulation and all of that type of thing to keep your energy bills low. We won't mention the kind of pink bat scandal in Victoria all those years ago, but this is, yeah, it was a good idea in theory, but probably not. execution. Yeah, the execution was lacking. The subcontractors just
Amra
Yeah, all the cowboys and stuff. So they've kind of learnt their lessons from
Amra (40:01.858)
from that experience and yeah they are making sure that they get qualified and you know specialised installers to go out to the social housing. That's the thing like you know I lived in Bosnia. where there is a proper winter, with snow and minus temperatures and all the windows are double glazed. Exactly.
Renee
All of the bricks, it's double brick because you need to have that proper insulation for the temperatures. in Australia, because we are the sun country and weatherborne houses which are beautiful, beautiful houses. Charming.
Renee (40:46.96)
Very charming, but they only work in like the northern part of the country where it's very warm all of the time. old Queenslanders with the deep verandas. And you want the airflow. You want the airflow circulating as it gets hot and then cool. But in suburbia... in Ballarat just up the road, all the little miners' cottages and stuff, you'll hear people that, you know, buy them intending to renovate them.
Amra (41:16.93)
and yeah incredibly cold and a nightmare to renovate and you know you get that energy efficiency level up and stuff so yeah our housing and look to be honest today I think the the quality of housing in Australia is really substandard it's really poor you know it's it's slap and dash like more homes more homes let's build them really quickly and develop issues coming up.
Amra (41:46.8)
a lot of issues with the developers, lot of issues in terms of new houses. Like I've spoken to so many people who have had issues with brand new houses. And you you invest your life savings in these homes and when they fail to keep you warm and fail to keep you cool in summer as well, it's a big problem in Australia, isn't it? It's a massive I remember, like you know, I lived in a brick house. We didn't have any central heating. And I remember
Amra (42:16.72)
sitting in my bedroom, full like covered, I had gloves. I would have to wear gloves while I was reading. Madonna fingerless gloves? Yeah, no, proper gloves because it was so cold. And that's the thing that people, that's why I love like social media where you people who are coming from other places in the world and they come here and they're like, your houses are colder than it is outside. It's actually colder in the house than it is when you walk outside.
Amra (42:46.71)
a fascinating thing. is and it's a failure you know in government policy and regulating building standards it really is a massive failure and you know I know that there's a lot of pressure on the government at the moment to build more houses because there is a lack of housing supply and that but do it properly for god's sake you know stop slapping up these substandard homes and creating problems for owners or
Amra (43:16.66)
or renters or residents, know, further down the track.
Renee (43:21.454)
It's really, yeah, it's not good enough. We can do a lot better. yeah, you look at, you know, even New Zealand across the ditch, their standards, their building standards, I think are a lot better than Australia's as well. it's, it all comes from government policy and what they allow and government regulations. So yeah, I think we can do a lot better. I don't have double glazing. I would love to. One thing that I've heard is,
Renee (43:51.498)
they've invented you know waffle blinds and stuff like that that act like double glazing so renters can actually put them in their homes and they're quite pretty they're not ugly you know kind of blinds or you know the old Venetians and stuff like that they're quite pretty but they're yeah they're called something like waffle waffle blinds and if you put them up on a window they're designed to capture the air between the outside and the
Renee (44:21.528)
and trap it and hence act like a double glazed window but a lot more affordable than putting in new glazing. So look into it people. I think that's another new invention actually that is helping to remediate the building issues that we've all inherited.
Renee (44:51.488)
So, I don't know, I'm just trying to sort of think. So we talked a lot about like things that people can do. So there are those things in terms of the house, but also things that we can do in our everyday. And, you know, so you're doing these, your choices, you know, the electric car, the electric home, it's your personal lifestyle choices. But you also see that part of a broader vision and activism around sustainability and energy. Yeah.
Amra (45:21.167)
And you're actually like taking a step to not just do this in your home, but to really advocate. Yeah, and educate other people, like help people to do the same thing. Because honestly, it is a minefield that you have to navigate of misinformation and choices as well. It's there's a lot of choice out there. You know, there's a lot of people that are off a solar and solar batteries. And, you know, how do you choose which one's right for you?
Renee (45:51.228)
as well and it's really daunting I think making those decisions because it's a big investment as well. So I think the best thing to do, I try and help educate people as much as I can just based on my experiences and what they can and can't do. yeah it is a bit bit of trial and error but my advice is to speak to people who've already done it and who've gone
Renee (46:21.038)
down that path and what were the pitfalls and what would they tell you not to do so that you don't repeat the same mistakes and yeah then you're already ahead of the game, you're ahead of me from when I started if you have spoken to somebody who's already done it and yeah who's... You're like a pioneer. Yeah but I tend to, you know me, like I am spontaneous and I'm all...
Amra (46:51.068)
This is why we get along so well. We're like jump in first, figure it out.
Renee
Rip my kitchen out, then get on YouTube and figure out how to build a new one. It's like, my gosh. Because then you've got no choice. This is no longer like, let me think about it. Now there's no going back. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I could only afford takeout for so long and I actually had to get stuck in and do it. But yeah, it's, and that's, that's been.
Renee (47:16.226)
you know, me my whole life actually, I do jump. You know, I take that leap and take that risk and with the EV as well, like I learned about the challenges of having a short range EV vehicle quite quickly. When I was being, they couldn't even tow me, I had to be loaded onto a tow truck and stuff back home. Very embarrassing. That's the thing that we sort of hesitate from doing a lot of things
Renee (47:46.16)
we're like I'm gonna make a fool of myself and don't quite know this is the joy of this age yeah we're at the point now where we're really don't care and what is failure yeah and just give it a go yeah and whatever happens yeah what you got to lose basically and I think there's more to gain than there is to lose as well and honestly I had a ugly 1980s kitchen as you remember in there and yeah it's now
Renee (48:16.08)
Now it's lovely, it looks kind of scandy and you know, I'm really happy with it.
Amra
I've got my first ever dishwasher, never had one in my life. So yeah, enjoying the benefits of that. you that on the same first house that I'm living in now. Oh, your house is beautiful. My house is I'm very lucky. But first dishwasher ever. I know. And now I'm Game changer. Game changer. can understand why people divorce. Yes. That don't have dishwashers.
Amra (48:46.0)
Yeah, yeah. And I'm like, you use a spoon, you put it in the dishwasher. I don't care what you you're in the dishwasher. Have you seen those crazy people who have two dishwashers? I know! I saw this one, it's like the dishwasher where you put all of the dirty things in. And then the other one is the clean, so you take out from the clean one.
Amra (49:05.006)
And then you just keep putting it in the dirty. So there's always one clean one and one dirty one. And I have to say, I did have a moment.
Renee
Where you thought about getting a second. Where could I fit it? Cause I watch, you know, I've watched the latest season of the block or whatever and it gave it so over the top Australian homes are I think on average.
Renee (49:26.498)
you know, 30 % bigger than most of the homes around the world. know, and they've got their butler's pantry, which is the second kitchen now. And they've got their second dishwasher and all of that type of thing. And you know, they got marked down if they didn't have all of this. And I'm thinking, how ridiculous. And they've got their outdoor kitchen, then they've got this and that. For God's sake, people, you know?
Amra
But that's the other thing. Look, I was reading an article about new houses being built now that the kitchens are really small. it's gone back to the old way.
Amra (49:56.482)
Yeah, so some of the new houses, there was this series that was being done, I think in the local newspaper or in the, I can't remember, one of the newspapers. And it was looking at how people are struggling to try and just like, they don't even have space to do one grocery shop. Because the kitchens that are being built for these McMansions.
Amra (50:18.926)
the kitchens are so small and it's like the most ridiculous thing. then I started looking- it's out of scale. Out of scale? Yeah. Because it's like, you've got these bedrooms and like, you know, look, it's nice having a nice bedroom, but like considering how much time you spend in the living part of your house, that's really where you need. Yeah. So I don't know, that really put me off. Then when I started looking at new houses at one point, cause you know how you go through those periods where you're like, I want a new house. And then you start looking around and you're like, no, no, no.
Amra (50:48.054)
So I started looking around and I was like, yes, there is something about these kitchens. With some of those new areas.
Renee
It's really interesting, isn't it? I remember, you know, back in my twenties, I was friends with a couple of girls who married Irish guys and every time they'd, we'd go around, the boys would always be in the kitchen.
Renee (51:09.89)
you know, at the table because apparently in Ireland, that's where they didn't gather in the living room. That's where they didn't catch up in the living room. The kitchen was the heart of the home, the hub of the home, probably because that's where the, you know, heating was as well and everything like that. But that's where they did all their socializing and community, you know, kind of, yeah, gathering. And yeah, I love that. And maybe, yeah. So the small kitchens aren't going to cut it from an Irish perspective either. I think for any of us, to be honest.
Amra (51:40.064)
It's very important. I just have one more question. Like in terms of when we think about sustainability and are there any myths that come to your mind that you want to bust? yeah, look people that bang on about their gas cooking and I'd never, never switch to electric or induction or whatever.
Renee
It's honestly, it's no different. Like it's, you know, it heats up really quickly. Induction in particular heats up really quick.
Renee (52:10.224)
and they have the induction in all NDIS purpose-built homes now. It's really, I think it's really important as our parents get older as well that they don't have gas cooking because they get very forgetful and leave it on. It's a very, unicarb and monoxide poisoning is real and it happens. My 90 year old neighbour used to leave her gas cooking on all the time and we had to remove the knobs.
Renee (52:39.664)
because I'd walk in and it'd just be a wall of gas and she didn't even smell it. So it's a problem for people with disabilities, the elderly, people who have potentially dementia and all of that type of thing. It's really dangerous. But what I found, and this was unexpected, was I don't have an induction cooktop. I've just got an electric cooktop.
Renee (53:09.584)
But I haven't had an asthma attack since 2022, since I switched. Really? Interesting. used to get asthma all the time and I have not had one asthma attack since I switched to electric cooking. another member of our envoy up to Canberra, her children have severe asthma and same thing with them. She said they haven't had asthma attacks.
Amra (53:37.568)
since she cooked to electric. So you, it makes you realize how much is actually emitting into the atmosphere and how it's affecting our breathing.
Amra
Which when you do think about it now, we know about fireplaces and that fireplaces actually did cause lung damage. And it's the same type of thing. It's an open flame.
Renee
Yeah, exactly. Food for thought. is. But other myths as well, it is affordable. you don't,
Renee (54:07.522)
you don't have to have a big budget to do it. Just do it step by step. Figure out what appliance you want to switch first. It could be cooking. You might want to save that to last. You might want to get rid of your heating. The SEC planner that was launched at my place last November, go online and look up SEC planner as well because what that actually does is it does a bit of an audit of your home and then it gives you solutions about
Renee (54:37.344)
You know which If you if you follow it all the way to the end basically It gives you alter. It gives you three options at the end with three different price ranges say for a heat pump electric hot water And it gives you accredited Installers and providers so it gives you a list of accredited people that have been vetted by the government not these
Renee (55:07.308)
boys that rolled out the pink bats and all of that type of thing so they're actually all vetted and you know accredited by the government so you can use that planner you don't have to but you can use that if you're not sure where to start it does give you some options as well. Another myth yeah if a gas company tells you that it costs a thousand dollars to abolish your gas meter it's not true. Fight them. Yeah go straight to to the energy ombudsman because they won't get away with it.
Amra (55:37.168)
A lot of times these days, because Renee and I know how to fight and complain. It's part of our ages. Yes, yes. You mention ombudsman, you mention, like you go through actually what rights you've got. put things in writing so you don't just speak to them, you send an email and put things on record.
Amra (56:05.326)
story changes very quickly. does. Because if they have to respond to you in writing, suddenly they're not so keen. They can say all sorts of things to you on the phone and you don't necessarily have proof of that. But when they have to put things in writing, and I've done some crazy stuff. We both done some crazy stuff where people try and like, know, treat us like idiots. Like, no, no, no, you can't do that. it's like, I remember once with the Vodafone.
Amra (56:32.844)
something with a phone, they sold me something, I didn't want something and I wanted something else. I can't remember if there was a case. And I just went, you can keep it. Since you're stealing from me, steal it completely, here's my phone and I left. Wow. Well, when I first moved to Bel-Anne from Belgrave, I think I was on Optus with telecommunications as well. And I got here and we didn't have an Optus now. I actually couldn't use my phone. Like it was impossible.
Renee (57:02.768)
trying to get me to send them my house sale contract to prove that I'd moved to a town that didn't and I was like no that's you know such personal information I'm not going to send it to to Optus and in the end I had to go to the ombudsman as well just to say look they will not let me get out of that contract I can't carry it over because I have no service here so I it has to be Telstra
Renee (57:32.718)
or nothing and yeah, so I know they try. They try. So the lesson is don't accept anything. Yeah. Fight. And also these days it's really good where if you do enough time Googling and you do enough time going down through rabbit warrens. It's just time that you have to dedicate to it and that we do all get exhausted. Yeah. And there are certain battles we go off, can't, I just can't. where you can, yeah, do the battles. Yeah. And just one step at a time.
Renee (58:02.698)
that's my main advice as well. Don't try and do it all at once, just one step at a time and it will become easier and it is affordable. It costs me I think $150 to get rid of my gas appliances. I've now got, I haven't got it on, sorry Amara, I'm used to the cold weather here but I've got a split system that heats and cools my home and it's much more efficient than the gas Reneye appliance.
Renee (58:32.558)
that I used to have that never even touched, know, the yeah, touch the cold in the house. was so cold. So yeah, it's it's yeah, it's just baby steps Bob and you'll get there in the end. Lovely.
Amra
Well, we might go do a tour of your EV, which stands for electric vehicle. Yeah. But thank you so much for this interview and for giving us all this information. I hope it helps somebody else.
Renee (59:02.518)
there as well. Like it's daunting as I said and it can be overwhelming and it kind of freezes you into inaction when there's so many options and so many considerations to take into account. But you know just break it down. It's quite easy to just break it down to one appliance at a time and just figure out where you'd like to make that first change and then you know once you get the ball rolling it kind of like
Renee (59:32.548)
you get addicted to like, you know, yeah, making all of these little environmental steps and you you carry your metal straw with you and you do these little things. You feel quite self-righteous. Yeah. And it does add up. It does help. And you know, the more people that are on board, the better for future generations like your daughter and you know, others as well, they're going to benefit. It's not just for us, it's for the future.
Amra (01:00:02.358)
generations. It's like that old saying, know, people who plant trees now know that they're doing it for benefiting the future because they won't live to see the benefits of it. Yeah, that's the key. my pleasure.
Amra
My pleasure. Renee, can you tell us about your car fence?
Renee (01:00:32.208)
Sure. Here we are in my, sorry for the mess, my garage. This is a Nissan Leaf. It's a 2017 model so the way that I charge it is I press a button here that flips open the the front charging hatch and I lift that up open that
Renee (01:00:53.198)
and plug that in. I'll let Amara do a close up of that now. Mind you don't trip down. And if you follow that, sorry, if you follow that cord, back to this switch, it's just plugged into a normal wall switch. And so that's trickle charging my car. And if you have a look at the flashing lights on the front of my dash,
Renee (01:01:23.63)
see those. It's like charging your phone or charging your laptop. It just shows you when the third light stops charging. It means that it's fully charged. Okay. So yeah, it's pretty simple. And this is only a 30 kilowatt battery. So it doesn't take too long to charge. It probably takes about on a fast charger.
Renee (01:01:51.406)
It would take about 30 minutes, but here at home it probably charges about 10 % every hour. So I probably got another 20 % to charge and then it's fully charged. Lovely. That's what I do. it doesn't, if I do it during the day when the solar is working, my solar panels are working, it basically doesn't show on my bills.
Renee (01:02:21.36)
So you time it for when you get maximum sun and try and charge your car then and then you won't see it on your electricity bill in three months time. That's it. Thank you so much for showing us My pleasure.
Amra (01:02:39.682)
Thank you for tuning in to Amra's Armchair Anecdotes. If you enjoyed today's episode, don't forget to subscribe and follow for more insights, stories and inspiration. From my armchair to yours, remember, every story begins with a single word.
Welcome to Amra's Armchair Anecdotes. I'm Amra Payalich, writer, teacher and storyteller. Pull up a chair and let's dive into stories about writing, life and lessons learned, sharing wisdom from my armchair to yours. You can find the episode show notes, your free episode handouts and my how-to guides at amrapayalich.com slash podcast.
Amra (00:30.082)
Now it's time to dive in.
Amra (00:33.87)
Welcome to our Amra's Chair Anecdotes. Today I'm speaking with Renee Robinson, who's actually a long time friend. But she also doesn't just talk about sustainability, she lives it. She drives an electric car, she powers her home with her own electricity generation, and has taken the kind of practical steps most of us only daydream about. She's proved that an electrified, low emissions lifestyle isn't some futuristic fantasy. It's happening right now in an ordinary Victorian
Amra (01:04.656)
home and we are in that home right now. So her efforts caught the attention of the Victorian government and in November 2024 her house became the launch site for the State Electricity Commission's new electric home planner pilot with Minister Lily D'Ambrosio and the member for Eureka turning up to showcase what's possible today. In February this year she was selected as one of the 20 women from around Australia. to be part of the 1 million women envoy to Canberra to convince politicians to support the electrification of 1 million homes across Australia. So she's going to cut through the hype and talk honestly about what works, what doesn't and what it really takes to live sustainably in a world that's playing catch up.
Renee (01:53.966)
Yes. Thank you. Thank you much. Thank you for having me and welcome to my home.
Amra
Yes. You've been here many times. I have been here many times but it's nice to come in and do this focus. Yeah. So I'm calling Renee the environmentalist and this is what this episode is about.
Renee
I like it. I like that title.
Amra
So can we just can you walk us through your decision to go all electric at home? What sparked it? And did you always think about sustainability or was there a particular moment that convinced you to make the switch?
Renee (02:23.92)
Really good questions. So probably what sparked me to go all electric was the black summer and feeling like most people across Australia just incredibly powerless in the face of so much devastation and destruction seeing all the animals dying. Sorry, Enzo, popping down, popping into
Renee (02:53.84)
down. It just, yeah, it was absolutely devastating. think a third of Australia's national forests went up in smoke. We lost so much wildlife, losses. I, like so many other people, felt incredibly helpless. And I realized that rather than looking at it on a big scale, I could narrow it down, narrow my focus down to just my household and try and do what little I could to help the big picture, if you like. Does that make sense?
Amra (03:23.76)
Yeah. So. Yeah. I mean, you've always been, we've been friends for a very long time. I think it's like going on three decades now. Yeah. And you have always been environmental in your efforts, but you have been a lot more conscious and a lot more deliberate in the past few years.
Renee (03:53.614)
Correct. Yeah. So it was for me, it was, I also did it on a budget. So I wanted to prove that you can do it on a very, very limited budget. I had gas heating and gas cooking, and I just decided I was going to get rid of those appliances and put in electric appliances. it was really, yeah, was easy to do those switches. It cost me, I think,
Renee (04:23.568)
$50 to get a plumber in to cap the gas and remove both of those appliances. I Ended up rebuilding my own kitchen as well. So it's a beautiful picture Thank you using YouTube so I I didn't have a big budget as I said and Once the electric cooktop went in I decided okay. I'm not going to leave my 1980s retro kitchen, you know
Renee (04:53.488)
in there as well so I just ripped it all out and rebuilt it and then the electric vehicle though took a little bit longer and more preparation so I ended up buying my EV through the Goodcar company which they sourced their vehicles from Japan secondhand so it was a Nissan Leaf, it still is a Nissan Leaf sitting in my driveway which I can show
Renee (05:23.408)
you after. I ended up just having to, my car was on its last leg so I decided I wasn't going to continue with the petrol vehicle and I just took that leap and bought a second hand EV from the Good Car Company three years ago now. And like a lot of people who do the electric cars do the hybrid whether you can do the petrol and electricity you are totally electric.
Renee (05:53.408)
electric so it was a big leap of faith because we didn't my parents live 300 kilometres from me and my vehicle doesn't have a 300 kilometre range so I actually had to wait another year before EV charges came were in place between where I live in Belan and my parents up in Horsham before I could actually drive my car up to visit my parents so I was getting lifts from my brother and yeah using other arrangements to
Renee (06:23.258)
get up to see them in the interim. So that was frustrating. I realised that, you know, there was definitely a lack of infrastructure. But I realised that after I bought it, it would have been fine in the city with all the alternative public transport and everything like that. But in rural Victoria, which is where I live, it wasn't an ideal situation. So it was a big leap of faith. And Murrableshire is the council that I live in and
Renee (06:53.258)
to this day we still don't have any V charges so it's a bit of a black hole for EV charging. in terms of some practical things when you're wanting to go somewhere you have to do research you have to check where there are like what's the process? Yeah so you can download the apps you can I downloaded Charge Fox and EV charging apps which are the main charges and so I have to
Renee (07:23.088)
basically look at where the charges are situated and figure out my route. So I go down to Mornington Peninsula a fair bit to house it for a friend and I rather than go through the city, I will go down to through Geelong and to Queenscliff and Queenscliff has a charger Geelong doesn't and then I think Geelong does now actually but I generally charge at Queenscliff.
Renee (07:53.168)
and then catch the ferry over. So it's more expensive to do it that way but it's a much more pleasant less less anxiety inducing kind of trip if I do take the ferry and that but another consideration you have to factor in is elevation. So coming back I can't make it back on the same journey on one charge so I've actually got to stop and make another stop at Bannetburnen. charge because it's all uphill.
Amra (08:22.928)
Yeah. you gotten into any trouble until you figured that out?
Renee
I have run out of charge four times. so yeah. So one of the key things that I did when I first got the car was to get roadside assist and make sure that that was covered. But each time has been within a six kilometre radius of my home. so it was quite good. Yeah, didn't quite get there once was actually coming back from your place.
Renee (08:52.848)
I know, I know and I ran out of charge two kilometers away so I could have walked home but yeah it just didn't make it. Coming from Backers Marsh up to Belan I think is about a 15 kilometer incline and I was just watching my charge get less, less, less, less, less, less and yeah didn't make it. So I haven't, you do learn those lessons early on and I do encourage people to get
Renee (09:22.768)
roadside assist but the EVs that are available nowadays particularly the Chinese models like the BYDs and the Cherries and stuff they have amazing range 300 kilometre ranges up to 600 kilometre ranges so they really don't have to rely on charging stations as much as the rest of us and another thing that you do you can't predict but
Renee (09:52.688)
Often if you get to a charging station, there's usually only one or two. And if you've got a damn Tesla plugged in, they take over an hour to charge and you know that you'll be waiting there for an hour for them to get off the damn charger. yeah, so that happened to you once when you're coming to the house. Yeah, it did. I'm here, but I suck. I know, I know. And he was actually plugged in for I think two hours. And yeah, I was just, yeah, I was furious at him when he came back.
Renee (10:22.608)
That's another consideration because we don't have enough infrastructure to keep pace with the electric vehicle take up. hence why a lot of people still opt for hybrids so that they have that backup. Because in Australia, especially without distances, it can be really tricky. So probably, you know, in my situation, it's probably if I want to go a long distance, if I want to head over to
Renee (10:52.548)
Melakuta for instance, which is what, eight hours away, I would hire a vehicle. I would not, I wouldn't rely on public transport. would, yeah, I'd actually hire a vehicle to go on that.
Amra (11:06.85)
Yeah, that sort of trip as well. And I was just wondering in terms of cost effectiveness, so you still have to pay for the charging?
Renee
So if you're on the EV charges, it's really, really affordable. It's really cost effective. So, you know, I I might pay ten dollars to charge my car fully. and that's not a lot compared to petrol prices.
Amra (11:24.544)
And how long is that like running for in terms of time?
Renee
Because I've only got a 30 kilowatt battery which is on the smaller range and that's why I've got a low range. It's really fast so I can charge in 30 minutes whereas your Teslas which have the longer range, their batteries are a lot bigger than mine so they might be 60 kilowatt or something and that's why they've got to plug in for about an hour to recharge.
Renee (11:54.528)
fully. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, so it's time. And like when you have a full battery, how many kilometres are you able to travel on that full battery? It varies probably up to 150 kilometres but highway driving is the worst. That uses up lot. Yeah, it uses a lot of energy. What's actually better for EVs is city driving. So they call it regenerative braking. So every time you slow down or brake
Renee (12:25.907)
you're kind of charging your battery at the same time so it's much more efficient to drive your EVs around the city than it is on the highway. And what about servicing and stuff like that? Good question because I actually haven't gotten it properly serviced yet just basically just you know the wheels and the alignment they're the only service I haven't had the battery serviced but because it's a Nissan
Renee (12:54.338)
if I just take it probably to a Nissan dealership and I think there's a lot more qualified
Amra (13:01.134)
mechanics now that do deal with these. I think they have to, they have to keep pace with the take up as well. One of the things early on in Victoria as well was when the Andrews government introduced the road use attacks for electric vehicles as well. So I used to have to take a photo of my odometer and every time I registered my vehicle and show how much I'd used it,
Renee (13:31.088)
what distances I traveled and I think they charged me two cents, two point something cents per kilometer. So that was really expensive. That ended up being really expensive, particularly if you do a lot of traveling in it. And that was overturned by the federal courts. One of the EV drivers actually took that policy to the federal courts and it was overturned and we were paid back by the Victorians.
Renee (14:01.038)
government because they realised that that was a law that could only be that was a tariff or a tax that could only be introduced federally it couldn't be introduced by the state government but now the Albanese government's talking about introducing a variation on that which is going to be a bit of a disincentive I think for other people to take up electric vehicles.
Amra
What's your theory about why they're doing the disincentives?
Renee (14:30.968)
The theory is that I think this government's been really disappointing unfortunately in terms of their sustainability and environmental policies. I think that I had high hopes for them and after going to Canberra as well in February I thought that they'd be a lot more proactive than they are but the fact that I think just a few weeks after they won the election in a landslide that they approved woodside mining on the northwest coast of Australia and you know
Renee (15:11.694)
basically didn't care about, you know, cultural art, rock art and, you know, the cultural ownership of that area as well and the impacts on that. But, you know, I find that this government's really lacking in ambition for environmental policies and sustainability. And they should be ambitious because they want in the landslide. It's going to take a
Renee (15:41.708)
long time before the opposition can kind of recover and build those numbers to even be you know in the running for government and that you know this is this was an opportunity for them to be incredibly ambitious and I feel that they have just gone the opposite way they're playing it safe but they're also kind of yeah they're not
Amra (16:06.958)
Yeah, I don't know. It's just been really disheartening, I think. I think one of the things when I talk to people and I don't really know much about solar energy, but one of the things that sort of come up, especially with people who come from Europe or other parts of the world, one of the things that they talk about is how in other parts of the world there is a lot more solar networks. Yeah, renewable. Yes. And that Australia, which is, you know, the southern country, the one where we get the most
Amra (16:36.912)
sun, that's what we're known for. And yet it seems that there is not much of that going on and that there is lobbying happening by coal companies, by companies who are benefiting from the non-renewable energy. The Gina Rinehart, etc. Because even, mean, it helped me, think that I've
Amra (17:06.832)
about this right, but there was a point where you were being paid for the electricity that you generated and it went back into the grid. Finning tariff, And then they started charging you for giving electricity back into the grid. And I just explained that and then let's talk about that. I know, I know, right? It's just, it You're generating electricity and that you're like, well.
Renee (17:34.606)
Release it. I'll give you some to use. Yes. Other customers. We're not going to pay you. Yeah. Charge you. know for the electricity that I'm generating. So I've probably got a 4.2 kilowatt system on my roof.
Renee (17:52.398)
And I don't have a battery at this stage because I haven't been able to afford to get a solar battery to store my own energy. That is on my wishlist, but again, it comes down to money. So fully electrified home, 4.2 kilowatt system on the roof, EV in the garage. So what happened? It entirely comes down to your providers. So I've been trying a few different electricity.
Renee (18:22.452)
providers and this one in particular, Amber, was known for being really good for people who fully electrified their home and had electric vehicles and that and I was encouraged to kind of sign up with them. So I did give them a go but that lasted probably about six months because I realised that they were actually charging me for the solar that I was at the
Renee (18:52.412)
energy that I was producing but not using myself because I was at work or I might have been away for a week or something like that so they were charging me for the excess energy that was feeding back into the grid. So way back probably I don't know 15 or 20 years ago the early adopters of solar actually had a feeding tariff of about 60 cents 61 cents per kilowatt that they generated so they would make
Renee (19:22.312)
money from their solar energy. So if you had that excess and went into the bridge you would get the... So they weren't making money so they weren't getting they were getting no bills, no electricity bills and they were actually generating electricity credit on top of that because the feeding tariff was so high. Compared to today the feeding tariff if you're lucky is three cents a kilowatt.
Amra (19:49.038)
So what happens with the electricity bills? Like, do you have to pay in electricity bills now?
Renee
Yeah, I do. I do. So we all have service charges. So that's approximately one dollar a day. So you're always going to be paying about thirty, thirty one dollars a month in service charge. And I do. I do still get electricity bills. I'm probably averaging between one hundred and one hundred and fifty a month because I, I
Renee (20:19.002)
use a lot of electricity because of my EV. I charge my EV in my garage. I don't have a specific EV charger in my garage. just charge it on...
Renee (20:31.374)
with your general plug and it's on trickle charge. So it charges approximately 10 % an hour. So I do drain a lot of electricity. So I'm probably spending between 100 and 150 a month on electricity still bearing in mind that 30, $31 of that is a service charge. Yeah. It's still though, pretty good. Better off in terms of petrol and electricity. And I've got no gas bill.
Renee (21:01.328)
So if I was still using gas, I'd still get charged gas bills on top of that. And one of the things I did when I got my gas appliances removed was I abolished my gas meter. It's called abolish because if you leave your meter there, even though you're not, you don't have gas appliances and you're not connected, they still charge you a service charge to the property. So you're still going to be charged, you know, that one or $2.
Renee (21:31.248)
day to have your gas, you know, yeah. the only way to get rid of that was to abolish my meter. And one of the things that I found with that was I had to go to the ombudsman because the, wanted to charge me $800 to remove my meter. So another disincentive by the gas companies, you know, to get off gas. Whereas now I went to the ombudsman and
Renee (22:01.208)
I ended up, I think, paying $60 for a call out fee for them to remove it. But I had to actually go to the ombudsman to get that to happen. now Lily D'Ambrosio, the Minister for Climate and Energy.
Renee (22:16.33)
energy for the Victorian government said that they've actually capped that and they're stopping electrical gas companies from doing that from charging you know absorbent amounts for people to get off gas so it is your yeah there's fail safes now in place where you're not going to be exploited by gas companies and prevented from doing that. just wanted to go back to the solar batteries how much do they cost? Now they've got really good rebates apparently
Renee (22:46.224)
Now federal government rebates, I think now is a very good time to to buy a battery it used to cost about $10,000 to get a battery and I think now with rebates it just depends on the size of your battery the KVAs I don't know a lot about that engineering kind of specifications of them, but I think that with the rebates it could cost you out of pocket maybe
Renee (23:16.144)
$3,000 or something like that. So it's actually a better time to get them and you can pay them off and everything. yeah, I will start looking into that a bit further, I think. Something interesting with the SEC, which the department who came here to launch the SEC planner back in November last year, they're wanting to actually make Belen a pilot town for
Renee (23:46.064)
batteries and solar so they're going to we haven't looked at the contracts yet but I've been through to a few information sessions and they're going to give us a battery for the first year but then there's a few little loopholes with that though they're going to they control where the energy that's stored in the battery from it my solar panels is going to be diverted so if there's power outages they
Renee (24:15.984)
might not let me run my household on it. They might divert it back to the grid or do things like that. yeah, so I'm interested to learn a little bit more about that program. I think they've still got to iron out a few of the little loopholes, but it will be, if successful, it'll be a good pilot program that can be rolled out to other rural community towns that do suffer frequent power outages or brownouts, I think they call it.
Renee (24:45.904)
which is not very... I'm not used to that term.
Amra
That's a term I've heard a lot on American TV. Especially in New York. I have a lot of brownouts. Especially during the New York heat.
Renee
Oh my gosh, it kind of reminds me of that our poop cruise or something.
Amra
Don't give me the poop cruise. I'm avoiding that documentary even though it wants to suck me in. I just also wanted to ask...
Amra (25:14.998)
And you know, I know that you bought your car a little while ago, but prices of electric cars versus regular cars, like what's going on there now?
Renee
they've completely gone down. Now's a really good time to buy EVs. if I had the opportunity, if I had a crystal ball, I probably would have held out for another couple of years because now you can buy a brand new car for less than I paid for my second second hand car with a better range and stuff. I yeah, it's one of those things though that you've got
Renee (25:44.932)
to, you know, it's...
Renee (25:48.78)
because I was an early adopter of EVs and that type of thing, it's helped new buyers now with prices and it's helped put infrastructure in place for these new electric vehicle drivers as well. it's one of those things that you kind of weigh up. Personally, I would have been better off just delaying it a few years if I could, but I'm still pleased that I
Renee (26:18.824)
to make that switch when I did because I think it's an important kind of example for other people to invest in, personally invest in electrifying their homes.
Amra (26:41.594)
Why should we care? Why do we need to do that? We've got petrol, we've got electricity.
Renee
Environmental emissions. The fact that basically we wanted to get to net zero by 2040, which now I think our federal government's also walking that back because they've approved Woodside, which can operate for another 20 or so years. They've kind of lost them.
Amra
What is Woodside?
Renee (27:11.628)
Woodside is around and I think it's an oil refinery up on the northwest shelf of Australia so yeah, it's It's a yeah gas gas refinery oil refinery. It's something it's it but it's one of those We've Australia's reaching natural resources and it's one of those Resources that they're going to basically it won't be for Australians to use it will
Renee (27:41.37)
be sold overseas. it never is by the way, it never is. and I think Japan is the main user for it. Don't quote me on any of this because I'm not quite across all of it but I know that it's bad and yeah apparently I think that the main buyer is Japan for it's probably gas not oil, I think it's gas and Japan had actually is on selling it.
Renee (28:11.234)
for a profit. So it's a ludicrous decision and it's a ludicrous, you know, yeah, it's something that our government never should have done. just, doesn't benefit us at all financially or, and it doesn't benefit the environment in any way, shape or form. in the meantime, you know, you can see all of these severe weather events that are a result from.
Amra (28:41.244)
I like, I can remember many years ago, there was a lot more movement in councils and, different areas about getting everyone environmentally sustainable. remember going to, I mean, this was when we had the water deficits, our catchment areas. And so going to workshops about, you know, sustainability. And then it was about composting and trying to.
Amra (29:11.684)
you know, look at. So there was, it felt like it was a lot more on the agenda. And now it's kind of gone off and it's not something that is being promoted as much and it's not something that, you certainly it's not in my consciousness, you know, when I think day to day. I actually had a moment the other day where I was like chopping all these vegetables and I was like, oh, I should look at composting again when I've got all
Amra (29:40.974)
these things and that's what made me think why aren't we doing these things anymore because yeah was really big thing about everyone trying to sort of think about sustainability and I know people at work, someone who built their house and he does have the solar battery and he does have rainwater tanks and you know he's really made an effort to be sustainable and to you know bring his costs down also but also for the benefit of the environment and so you
Renee (30:10.864)
That's the thing. It's a big personal investment and when we were in Canberra it was really interesting because we didn't get to meet Prime Minister Albanese but we did get to meet his Chief of Staff and one of their arguments was that Australia already has a 40 % take up of solar panels and so we're tracking really well compared to the rest of the world, not Europeans because they're
Renee (30:40.784)
well advanced. you know, compared they're not the rest of the world. We're not counting them as the world. Exactly, exactly. But what my argument to him was actually that wasn't government investment though, that was personal investment. So that was community led action. So people invested personally in getting solar panels put on their roofs to try and help the environment. there was, yeah, there wasn't a lot
Renee (31:10.704)
of incentive from governments. There may have been a few state government grants around at the time, but you know, they dried up pretty quickly. So it's basically people just taking that personal step and investing in it means that more than 40 % of households across Australia now have solar on their roofs. at the beginning of 2021, I believe, it was
Renee (31:40.624)
the or 20, no, beginning of 2022, the Victorian government became leaders in policy that meant that no new house builds in Victoria can be connected to gas. So the gas industry is really hurting at the moment. And that's why you're seeing all the lobbyists and all of that type of thing happen as well because
Renee (32:10.764)
across Victoria if you're building a new home you cannot connect to gas so you have no alternative to be connected to electricity. And also like in terms of you so did you do the personal investment in terms of doing the solar panels? I did I'm still paying it off so it was a five year paying it off over five years so I've got about a year left to pay off so that's on top of like so I'm probably paying another hundred and fifty dollars a month on top of my a hundred to a hundred and fifty dollars
Renee (32:40.464)
electricity just to pay off my solar. so you're still sort of and then when you've paid that off that's when you'll be getting the That's when hopefully the benefits and that yeah but one thing that one of the installers, one of the quotes that I got, what he told me was really kind of it just made sense and it was really he just said if you're living in the property for more than five years then invest in solar.
Renee (33:10.384)
but if you're not, you won't reap the benefits until after that five years. So it's something that you've got to weigh up as well. if you're planning on selling or moving or whatever, it's probably, in the next couple of years, it's probably not a good investment. Save it for your new home. But if you are planning on staying in your house long-term, then it is a really good investment because it is a long-term investment.
Renee (33:40.304)
Yeah I do I've got a couple of rainwater tanks and that was another state government policy I think about 20 years ago that you had to have them either connected to your toilets or your laundry when we had the the drought and the water shortages in the 2000s so that was new builds had to it was was law that you had to have rainwater tanks and then they had to be connected to either your flushing toilets or your laundry to reduce your water usage.
Renee (34:10.504)
and stuff so mine are connected to the toilet. So you're really, the other thing that you've done over the years that I just also think is worthwhile talking about, you take your own cutlery, you take your own straw, you have like a little pack and so I emulated you where I bought some of those things and so you try also not to contribute to that sort of waste. So what are some other things that you can think of off the top of your head that people could
Renee (34:40.184)
be doing. Yeah well that was one of the things that they talked about with composting so that you're not contributing to general waste and you're actually composting all of your food and all of that so I think it reduces your general waste by about a third. If you can do that composting is really useful. I've actually got like a little thing that I might be able to give you when you go home it's one of those...
Renee (35:08.118)
trying to think of the name of it, but it was one where Bokashi buckets. It's one of the ones where renters use or people with no gardens that you can dig your compost into and you add some Bokashi mix to it and it breaks down. It's like enzymes or something and it breaks down the food and then you've got like your worm weight, your liquid fertilizer from it. you can use that.
Renee (35:38.032)
you dilute it, don't put it on straight, but dilute it with water and your plants just love it. And then the waste, if you've got a community garden near you, you can take it to the community garden to compost, or you can just bring it back to me or you've got a bit of a garden. you'll be able to dig up.
Amra
And now that I am doing a lot more vegetables and doing a lot more cooking, I'm actually looking at how much vegetable
Amra (36:07.952)
And I'm like, this is something that I should be doing with it, rather than putting it in the bin. Because we do the recycling, we've got the different bins and stuff, so we try and do our little things. And it's like, that's one step further that we can...
Renee
You might, because you go through a lot of veggies and fruit and stuff, you might benefit from a bigger, just a general composting system and stuff. I think that you've probably got the room for that rather than the Bokashi. Bokashi is really just for a pastime.
Renee (36:37.881)
apartment uses and you know because it's Japanese because she you know sounds Japanese it is Japanese yeah and it was was designed for you know tiny apartment living and that type of thing. One thing when we're up in Canberra actually it was interesting because the 20 women in our envoy we did have people who lived in social housing and lots of renters as well we had across the age ranges and they were saying
Renee (37:07.832)
well what can we do because we can't actually electrify our home personally. You know what sort of things can we do to you know fully electrify our homes and some of the solutions were really really interesting because I know that some have invested in community-owned solar farms. I think once at Haystacks, Google it and yeah that was a community-owned solar farm that people were able to invest in.
Renee (37:37.722)
So they get returns on the energy generated by that solar farm and they're able to pay down their energy bill. So I think you have to belong to a specific energy company and all of the solar input gets calculated by that energy company and depending on the amount of shares you've got in that solar farm.
Renee (38:07.632)
field, yeah, you get that deducted from your energy bill. So that's pretty cool. So that's solution for apartment living and for renters as well. So you can still benefit from electrification, but you've got to kind of think outside the square. also, you don't have to use that gas cooktop. You can go out and buy,
Renee (38:38.911)
I think Kmart's single induction cooktop that you just plug in, I think they vary between $50 and $90. So you can actually buy an induction cooktop and you can just put a chopping block over your gas cooktop if you want and just use that to prepare your meal and just cook on your induction cooktop. So you can get a single or a double. So that's another alternative that you can look at.
Renee (39:07.472)
but it is electrifying your home and keeping your bills low. So there are solutions that are out there for renters and people who do live in social housing to help you benefit. And I think also the federal government was saying that they are investing a lot of money now into...
Renee (39:32.734)
in terms of social housing, you know, making sure that they've got proper insulation and all of that type of thing to keep your energy bills low. We won't mention the kind of pink bat scandal in Victoria all those years ago, but this is, yeah, it was a good idea in theory, but probably not. execution. Yeah, the execution was lacking. The subcontractors just
Amra
Yeah, all the cowboys and stuff. So they've kind of learnt their lessons from
Amra (40:01.858)
from that experience and yeah they are making sure that they get qualified and you know specialised installers to go out to the social housing. That's the thing like you know I lived in Bosnia. where there is a proper winter, with snow and minus temperatures and all the windows are double glazed. Exactly.
Renee
All of the bricks, it's double brick because you need to have that proper insulation for the temperatures. in Australia, because we are the sun country and weatherborne houses which are beautiful, beautiful houses. Charming.
Renee (40:46.96)
Very charming, but they only work in like the northern part of the country where it's very warm all of the time. old Queenslanders with the deep verandas. And you want the airflow. You want the airflow circulating as it gets hot and then cool. But in suburbia... in Ballarat just up the road, all the little miners' cottages and stuff, you'll hear people that, you know, buy them intending to renovate them.
Amra (41:16.93)
and yeah incredibly cold and a nightmare to renovate and you know you get that energy efficiency level up and stuff so yeah our housing and look to be honest today I think the the quality of housing in Australia is really substandard it's really poor you know it's it's slap and dash like more homes more homes let's build them really quickly and develop issues coming up.
Amra (41:46.8)
a lot of issues with the developers, lot of issues in terms of new houses. Like I've spoken to so many people who have had issues with brand new houses. And you you invest your life savings in these homes and when they fail to keep you warm and fail to keep you cool in summer as well, it's a big problem in Australia, isn't it? It's a massive I remember, like you know, I lived in a brick house. We didn't have any central heating. And I remember
Amra (42:16.72)
sitting in my bedroom, full like covered, I had gloves. I would have to wear gloves while I was reading. Madonna fingerless gloves? Yeah, no, proper gloves because it was so cold. And that's the thing that people, that's why I love like social media where you people who are coming from other places in the world and they come here and they're like, your houses are colder than it is outside. It's actually colder in the house than it is when you walk outside.
Amra (42:46.71)
a fascinating thing. is and it's a failure you know in government policy and regulating building standards it really is a massive failure and you know I know that there's a lot of pressure on the government at the moment to build more houses because there is a lack of housing supply and that but do it properly for god's sake you know stop slapping up these substandard homes and creating problems for owners or
Amra (43:16.66)
or renters or residents, know, further down the track.
Renee (43:21.454)
It's really, yeah, it's not good enough. We can do a lot better. yeah, you look at, you know, even New Zealand across the ditch, their standards, their building standards, I think are a lot better than Australia's as well. it's, it all comes from government policy and what they allow and government regulations. So yeah, I think we can do a lot better. I don't have double glazing. I would love to. One thing that I've heard is,
Renee (43:51.498)
they've invented you know waffle blinds and stuff like that that act like double glazing so renters can actually put them in their homes and they're quite pretty they're not ugly you know kind of blinds or you know the old Venetians and stuff like that they're quite pretty but they're yeah they're called something like waffle waffle blinds and if you put them up on a window they're designed to capture the air between the outside and the
Renee (44:21.528)
and trap it and hence act like a double glazed window but a lot more affordable than putting in new glazing. So look into it people. I think that's another new invention actually that is helping to remediate the building issues that we've all inherited.
Renee (44:51.488)
So, I don't know, I'm just trying to sort of think. So we talked a lot about like things that people can do. So there are those things in terms of the house, but also things that we can do in our everyday. And, you know, so you're doing these, your choices, you know, the electric car, the electric home, it's your personal lifestyle choices. But you also see that part of a broader vision and activism around sustainability and energy. Yeah.
Amra (45:21.167)
And you're actually like taking a step to not just do this in your home, but to really advocate. Yeah, and educate other people, like help people to do the same thing. Because honestly, it is a minefield that you have to navigate of misinformation and choices as well. It's there's a lot of choice out there. You know, there's a lot of people that are off a solar and solar batteries. And, you know, how do you choose which one's right for you?
Renee (45:51.228)
as well and it's really daunting I think making those decisions because it's a big investment as well. So I think the best thing to do, I try and help educate people as much as I can just based on my experiences and what they can and can't do. yeah it is a bit bit of trial and error but my advice is to speak to people who've already done it and who've gone
Renee (46:21.038)
down that path and what were the pitfalls and what would they tell you not to do so that you don't repeat the same mistakes and yeah then you're already ahead of the game, you're ahead of me from when I started if you have spoken to somebody who's already done it and yeah who's... You're like a pioneer. Yeah but I tend to, you know me, like I am spontaneous and I'm all...
Amra (46:51.068)
This is why we get along so well. We're like jump in first, figure it out.
Renee
Rip my kitchen out, then get on YouTube and figure out how to build a new one. It's like, my gosh. Because then you've got no choice. This is no longer like, let me think about it. Now there's no going back. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I could only afford takeout for so long and I actually had to get stuck in and do it. But yeah, it's, and that's, that's been.
Renee (47:16.226)
you know, me my whole life actually, I do jump. You know, I take that leap and take that risk and with the EV as well, like I learned about the challenges of having a short range EV vehicle quite quickly. When I was being, they couldn't even tow me, I had to be loaded onto a tow truck and stuff back home. Very embarrassing. That's the thing that we sort of hesitate from doing a lot of things
Renee (47:46.16)
we're like I'm gonna make a fool of myself and don't quite know this is the joy of this age yeah we're at the point now where we're really don't care and what is failure yeah and just give it a go yeah and whatever happens yeah what you got to lose basically and I think there's more to gain than there is to lose as well and honestly I had a ugly 1980s kitchen as you remember in there and yeah it's now
Renee (48:16.08)
Now it's lovely, it looks kind of scandy and you know, I'm really happy with it.
Amra
I've got my first ever dishwasher, never had one in my life. So yeah, enjoying the benefits of that. you that on the same first house that I'm living in now. Oh, your house is beautiful. My house is I'm very lucky. But first dishwasher ever. I know. And now I'm Game changer. Game changer. can understand why people divorce. Yes. That don't have dishwashers.
Amra (48:46.0)
Yeah, yeah. And I'm like, you use a spoon, you put it in the dishwasher. I don't care what you you're in the dishwasher. Have you seen those crazy people who have two dishwashers? I know! I saw this one, it's like the dishwasher where you put all of the dirty things in. And then the other one is the clean, so you take out from the clean one.
Amra (49:05.006)
And then you just keep putting it in the dirty. So there's always one clean one and one dirty one. And I have to say, I did have a moment.
Renee
Where you thought about getting a second. Where could I fit it? Cause I watch, you know, I've watched the latest season of the block or whatever and it gave it so over the top Australian homes are I think on average.
Renee (49:26.498)
you know, 30 % bigger than most of the homes around the world. know, and they've got their butler's pantry, which is the second kitchen now. And they've got their second dishwasher and all of that type of thing. And you know, they got marked down if they didn't have all of this. And I'm thinking, how ridiculous. And they've got their outdoor kitchen, then they've got this and that. For God's sake, people, you know?
Amra
But that's the other thing. Look, I was reading an article about new houses being built now that the kitchens are really small. it's gone back to the old way.
Amra (49:56.482)
Yeah, so some of the new houses, there was this series that was being done, I think in the local newspaper or in the, I can't remember, one of the newspapers. And it was looking at how people are struggling to try and just like, they don't even have space to do one grocery shop. Because the kitchens that are being built for these McMansions.
Amra (50:18.926)
the kitchens are so small and it's like the most ridiculous thing. then I started looking- it's out of scale. Out of scale? Yeah. Because it's like, you've got these bedrooms and like, you know, look, it's nice having a nice bedroom, but like considering how much time you spend in the living part of your house, that's really where you need. Yeah. So I don't know, that really put me off. Then when I started looking at new houses at one point, cause you know how you go through those periods where you're like, I want a new house. And then you start looking around and you're like, no, no, no.
Amra (50:48.054)
So I started looking around and I was like, yes, there is something about these kitchens. With some of those new areas.
Renee
It's really interesting, isn't it? I remember, you know, back in my twenties, I was friends with a couple of girls who married Irish guys and every time they'd, we'd go around, the boys would always be in the kitchen.
Renee (51:09.89)
you know, at the table because apparently in Ireland, that's where they didn't gather in the living room. That's where they didn't catch up in the living room. The kitchen was the heart of the home, the hub of the home, probably because that's where the, you know, heating was as well and everything like that. But that's where they did all their socializing and community, you know, kind of, yeah, gathering. And yeah, I love that. And maybe, yeah. So the small kitchens aren't going to cut it from an Irish perspective either. I think for any of us, to be honest.
Amra (51:40.064)
It's very important. I just have one more question. Like in terms of when we think about sustainability and are there any myths that come to your mind that you want to bust? yeah, look people that bang on about their gas cooking and I'd never, never switch to electric or induction or whatever.
Renee
It's honestly, it's no different. Like it's, you know, it heats up really quickly. Induction in particular heats up really quick.
Renee (52:10.224)
and they have the induction in all NDIS purpose-built homes now. It's really, I think it's really important as our parents get older as well that they don't have gas cooking because they get very forgetful and leave it on. It's a very, unicarb and monoxide poisoning is real and it happens. My 90 year old neighbour used to leave her gas cooking on all the time and we had to remove the knobs.
Renee (52:39.664)
because I'd walk in and it'd just be a wall of gas and she didn't even smell it. So it's a problem for people with disabilities, the elderly, people who have potentially dementia and all of that type of thing. It's really dangerous. But what I found, and this was unexpected, was I don't have an induction cooktop. I've just got an electric cooktop.
Renee (53:09.584)
But I haven't had an asthma attack since 2022, since I switched. Really? Interesting. used to get asthma all the time and I have not had one asthma attack since I switched to electric cooking. another member of our envoy up to Canberra, her children have severe asthma and same thing with them. She said they haven't had asthma attacks.
Amra (53:37.568)
since she cooked to electric. So you, it makes you realize how much is actually emitting into the atmosphere and how it's affecting our breathing.
Amra
Which when you do think about it now, we know about fireplaces and that fireplaces actually did cause lung damage. And it's the same type of thing. It's an open flame.
Renee
Yeah, exactly. Food for thought. is. But other myths as well, it is affordable. you don't,
Renee (54:07.522)
you don't have to have a big budget to do it. Just do it step by step. Figure out what appliance you want to switch first. It could be cooking. You might want to save that to last. You might want to get rid of your heating. The SEC planner that was launched at my place last November, go online and look up SEC planner as well because what that actually does is it does a bit of an audit of your home and then it gives you solutions about
Renee (54:37.344)
You know which If you if you follow it all the way to the end basically It gives you alter. It gives you three options at the end with three different price ranges say for a heat pump electric hot water And it gives you accredited Installers and providers so it gives you a list of accredited people that have been vetted by the government not these
Renee (55:07.308)
boys that rolled out the pink bats and all of that type of thing so they're actually all vetted and you know accredited by the government so you can use that planner you don't have to but you can use that if you're not sure where to start it does give you some options as well. Another myth yeah if a gas company tells you that it costs a thousand dollars to abolish your gas meter it's not true. Fight them. Yeah go straight to to the energy ombudsman because they won't get away with it.
Amra (55:37.168)
A lot of times these days, because Renee and I know how to fight and complain. It's part of our ages. Yes, yes. You mention ombudsman, you mention, like you go through actually what rights you've got. put things in writing so you don't just speak to them, you send an email and put things on record.
Amra (56:05.326)
story changes very quickly. does. Because if they have to respond to you in writing, suddenly they're not so keen. They can say all sorts of things to you on the phone and you don't necessarily have proof of that. But when they have to put things in writing, and I've done some crazy stuff. We both done some crazy stuff where people try and like, know, treat us like idiots. Like, no, no, no, you can't do that. it's like, I remember once with the Vodafone.
Amra (56:32.844)
something with a phone, they sold me something, I didn't want something and I wanted something else. I can't remember if there was a case. And I just went, you can keep it. Since you're stealing from me, steal it completely, here's my phone and I left. Wow. Well, when I first moved to Bel-Anne from Belgrave, I think I was on Optus with telecommunications as well. And I got here and we didn't have an Optus now. I actually couldn't use my phone. Like it was impossible.
Renee (57:02.768)
trying to get me to send them my house sale contract to prove that I'd moved to a town that didn't and I was like no that's you know such personal information I'm not going to send it to to Optus and in the end I had to go to the ombudsman as well just to say look they will not let me get out of that contract I can't carry it over because I have no service here so I it has to be Telstra
Renee (57:32.718)
or nothing and yeah, so I know they try. They try. So the lesson is don't accept anything. Yeah. Fight. And also these days it's really good where if you do enough time Googling and you do enough time going down through rabbit warrens. It's just time that you have to dedicate to it and that we do all get exhausted. Yeah. And there are certain battles we go off, can't, I just can't. where you can, yeah, do the battles. Yeah. And just one step at a time.
Renee (58:02.698)
that's my main advice as well. Don't try and do it all at once, just one step at a time and it will become easier and it is affordable. It costs me I think $150 to get rid of my gas appliances. I've now got, I haven't got it on, sorry Amara, I'm used to the cold weather here but I've got a split system that heats and cools my home and it's much more efficient than the gas Reneye appliance.
Renee (58:32.558)
that I used to have that never even touched, know, the yeah, touch the cold in the house. was so cold. So yeah, it's it's yeah, it's just baby steps Bob and you'll get there in the end. Lovely.
Amra
Well, we might go do a tour of your EV, which stands for electric vehicle. Yeah. But thank you so much for this interview and for giving us all this information. I hope it helps somebody else.
Renee (59:02.518)
there as well. Like it's daunting as I said and it can be overwhelming and it kind of freezes you into inaction when there's so many options and so many considerations to take into account. But you know just break it down. It's quite easy to just break it down to one appliance at a time and just figure out where you'd like to make that first change and then you know once you get the ball rolling it kind of like
Renee (59:32.548)
you get addicted to like, you know, yeah, making all of these little environmental steps and you you carry your metal straw with you and you do these little things. You feel quite self-righteous. Yeah. And it does add up. It does help. And you know, the more people that are on board, the better for future generations like your daughter and you know, others as well, they're going to benefit. It's not just for us, it's for the future.
Amra (01:00:02.358)
generations. It's like that old saying, know, people who plant trees now know that they're doing it for benefiting the future because they won't live to see the benefits of it. Yeah, that's the key. my pleasure.
Amra
My pleasure. Renee, can you tell us about your car fence?
Renee (01:00:32.208)
Sure. Here we are in my, sorry for the mess, my garage. This is a Nissan Leaf. It's a 2017 model so the way that I charge it is I press a button here that flips open the the front charging hatch and I lift that up open that
Renee (01:00:53.198)
and plug that in. I'll let Amara do a close up of that now. Mind you don't trip down. And if you follow that, sorry, if you follow that cord, back to this switch, it's just plugged into a normal wall switch. And so that's trickle charging my car. And if you have a look at the flashing lights on the front of my dash,
Renee (01:01:23.63)
see those. It's like charging your phone or charging your laptop. It just shows you when the third light stops charging. It means that it's fully charged. Okay. So yeah, it's pretty simple. And this is only a 30 kilowatt battery. So it doesn't take too long to charge. It probably takes about on a fast charger.
Renee (01:01:51.406)
It would take about 30 minutes, but here at home it probably charges about 10 % every hour. So I probably got another 20 % to charge and then it's fully charged. Lovely. That's what I do. it doesn't, if I do it during the day when the solar is working, my solar panels are working, it basically doesn't show on my bills.
Renee (01:02:21.36)
So you time it for when you get maximum sun and try and charge your car then and then you won't see it on your electricity bill in three months time. That's it. Thank you so much for showing us My pleasure.
Amra (01:02:39.682)
Thank you for tuning in to Amra's Armchair Anecdotes. If you enjoyed today's episode, don't forget to subscribe and follow for more insights, stories and inspiration. From my armchair to yours, remember, every story begins with a single word.