Modular building should be the natural choice for Australian homes, both new build and renovations. Off-site or factory-built components (whether ‘volumetric’ modules or flat-pack panels) should be cheaper, quicker, higher quality, and provide more design flexibility.
On-site labour can easily cost 4 times factory labour rates, despite being able to get
There is a lot of buzz and talk in Australia about solar PV owners losing attractive feed-in tariffs (25 to 60 cents / kWh) and falling back to take-it-or-leave it offers from electricity network monopolies of around 6 cents / kWh.
This in turn has led to talk of installing batteries,
Small to medium enterprises (20 – 200 staff) are eligible for 50% subsidy for energy efficiency and materials efficiency investigations, but applications close 31 March 2016 for energy assessments, and in May for materials assessments.
Genesis Now completed very successful materials and energy efficiency assessments under the earlier Sustainability Victoria program: Smarter Resources
If you operate a medium to large business in Victoria, Australia, chances are that ‘Critical Peak Demand Day’ charges will account for a large part of your annual electricity cost. Most managers focus on the ‘retail’ component, but the Critical Peak Demand charge (which almost nobody is aware of) can
In October 2013 Genesis Now wrote about Victoria network providers moving from demand charges based on real power (kW) to apparent power (kVA) for large energy users (here’s the link).
At that time, Ausnet and United Energy had made the switch; Citipower / Powercor will do so from 1st July 2016
I certainly wasn’t expecting to be spending time on Saturday, blogging about Origin Energy’s apparent tendency to invoice customers for gas they haven’t supplied.
Aaargh! In Sep 2013 I wrote a post on the frustration caused by incorrect electricity and natural gas invoices, which somehow always err on the high side. Particularly
