Australia’s first ‘smart home’ family

The EnergyAustralia Smart Home in Sydney has its first occupants - a family of three - who will live in it for a year to test and report on the new technologies in the house.

The couple and their young daughter were chosen from 160 families from as far away as New York and Sweden to live in the Smart Home and write a blog about their experiences.

Energy Minister Paul Lynch said people aged 14-65, from all walks of life, applied to take part in the year-long experiment to see the future of energy use.

Lynch, Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Minister for Climate Change and the Environment Angela D’Amore and Member for Auburn Barbara Perry welcomed the family to the Smart Home at Newington in Sydney.

“The Smart Home is a mini power-station, designed to produce all its own electricity on site using two types of solar panels, a ceramic fuel cell and new battery storage technology,” Lynch said.

More than 20 of the latest energy- and water-efficient appliances have been installed, including a special website so the family can track their use and turn appliances on and off remotely.

D’Amore said the Home Energy Monitor would show minute by minute how much energy was being used by each appliance, including the cost and CO₂ emissions: “The family’s trials and triumphs in the home will show us what works and what doesn’t when it comes to cutting household energy and water use in the future.”

Perry added that the Smart Home would generate its own power using two types of rooftop solar panels, including a solar pergola and one of only two ceramic fuel cells installed in Australia, which converts natural gas into electricity: “An Australian battery storage system is also installed in the backyard to store electricity produced by the home during to day for use at night during peak times.”

Key electric features of the home include:

• Solar pergola - new thin-film solar technology used as a pergola roof to provide shade, while producing 0.5 kW of electricity;
• LED ‘chandelier’ and lighting in living room that uses less than 100 W - a quarter of the energy consumed by conventional low-voltage downlights;
• Heat-pump clothes dryer;
• 6-star LCD TV that uses less than half the energy of a 3-star rated model of the same size; and
• Heat-exchange air conditioner.

The Smart Home is part of a two-year Smart Village trial in Newington and Silverwater by EnergyAustralia and Sydney Water. The trial is supported by $1.5 million from NSW Government’s Climate Change Fund.

The Smart Home trial will help EnergyAustralia and Sydney Water build smarter, greener and more efficient networks, which will also help households reduce their environmental impact.