Story in SBS about how an Australian physicist found a way to shave 10% off his neighbours’ power bills.
Arkadiy Matsekh changed the billing system of the embedded network of his housing complex. As a result, his neighbours are saving up to 10 per cent on their power bills.
Dr Sturmberg believes that the greatest achievement of this particular body corporate is that the community was able to reach an agreement and embrace change.
“Dr Matsekh seems to have done a lot of work by actually talking to his neighbours and getting their support,” he says.
“The bigger impact of what he has done is not kilowatt-hours of solar that he has produced. But the social expectations that he is setting in his neighbourhood.
The message to the broader society says that ‘everyone deserves access to cheap and clean power’.
In his work, Dr Sturmberg collaborates with a number of social researchers.
“The general findings are that people care a lot about fairness and equity. They see that a privatised electricity system just doesn’t deliver that at all.
“Community batteries, rooftop solar, smart appliances for your home — all of that always gets tainted by commercial imperatives of the market structure. A lot of citizens end up being frustrated by it.
“We need trust in order to go through this change in terms of energy transition.”