Inner City Apartment Electrification Journey 2024

House Notes – Inner City Apartment Electrification Journey

Our north facing two-bedroom bottom floor apartment is part of a 60’s double brick development of four units that we’ve bought in 2016. Right from the start we’ve been on a sustainability journey with it, taking the apartment and building with support of the body corporate committee, on a true sustainability journey. We’ve been gradually improving its environmental footprint through a range of initiatives such as installing double glazed windows for thermal comfort all year around, a 6.6kwh solar panel system ensuring 60-70% of its energy use is renewable and an energy efficient heat pump using solar energy providing us with free hot water for most of the year. Our next step in our carbon footprint reduction journey is the installation of an induction cooktop over the next few months making our apartment fully electric and mostly powered by a renewable (and free!) energy source.

Whilst there have been financial benefits of around $100-$150 p month in energy costs and a likely capital value appreciation, our core driver for these initiatives is setting an example for our daughter that you can live a happy, fulfilling life without significant energy and material footprints. Furthermore, these initiatives have inspired other owners in our building, including landlords, to also install solar panels and double-glazed windows reducing the overall building footprint whilst strengthening the overall community feel in the building.

Our final initatives in our apartment sustainability journey would be to consider wall insulation, and a battery to allow us to be fully off-grid, making our apartment near net zero. Outside mitigation of the overall carbon footprint of our apartment we will continue to look for opportunities to reduce our emissions through reviewing all areas of living – including transportation and consumption patterns but these may be stories to share in a future edition!