Electricity can be dangerous!
Never has our strict policy of solar installers always going on site to meet potential customers proved to be so important as it was when installer Roland Lawrence visited Joe and Sara Wickert in Fitzroy St, Marrickville.
Sara and Joe outside their Marrickville home.
When Roland arrived to measure up for solar and a battery, before he’d even knocked on the door he noticed one of two wires from the power pole was not connected to the house. It was just hanging loose. .
This was the neutral wire which is essential for the safe operation of the house. Without this being connected, there had been a significant risk that someone standing in water in the bathroom and touching metal might have been electrocuted.
It has been like that for years.
Roland immediately shut off power to the house and within an hour, he’d organised a specialist electrician to reconnect the wire, making the system safe.
“It was quite astounding to learn we had been living in a quite dangerous environment in the house because of the damage to the electrical system,” Joe says.
“He went above and beyond, it was amazing,“ Sara added.
Joe and Sara had a small solar PV system installed in 2007 but earlier this year decided it was time to upgrade. With our support, they now have an 8.36 kilowatt system with a 9.7 kilowatt-hour battery. As you can see from the chart from the inverter app, most days now they are using no power from the grid. That’s what they want.
A typical sunny day for Joe and Sara - almost no power pulled from the grid!
“We are committed to the environment," Joe says. “We acknowledge that climate change is a huge issue globally, and we want to be able to do what we can to help. Solar power just makes so much sense.
“I always felt like we had some consumer power to help bring it to economies of scale. So I always felt that’s something we could do to help. If we bought panels, that would help factories get to economies of scale, and they’d be cheaper, and there would be that snowball effect. And that’s something we could do to make real change.”
“I am very concerned about climate change,” Sara says, “very concerned about what sort of future we’re leaving for my own kids, and grandkids, but also on a general level for the future generations of the whole world.
“Our generation and the generations before us have done a lot of damage to the environment, accelerating global warming, and I’m very concerned about it - and I want to do whatever I can to help mitigate it. I feel very much like it’s the moral imperative.”
Joe runs a media business, Sara is an accountant, and they have two daughters aged 18 and 20. So time is precious.
Working with Inner West Community Energy took the hassle out of the process.
“Knowing there was an organisation that was community-based, was local, and was already used by people I respect in the community, just made it a no-brainer to approach you guys and help in getting our system upgraded,” Joe says.
If you’d like our help with solar, batteries and the electrification of everything, contact us via our website.
And our next community information evening, Go Solar + Storage in Dulwich Hill! will be tomorrow week, Monday, October 27th at Butchers Brew Bar, starting at 7pm.
It’s a free event but bookings are essential via Humanitix here.