It’s 2022. A man walks into a bar. A group of friends, there for the Tuesday night schnitzel deal, sit up and take notice: it’s Dr Saul Griffith and lives are about to change.

The bar is Ryan’s Thirroul, the friends are climate activists wanting to take practical action and Saul has recently returned from the US after publishing Electrify: An Optimist’s Playbook for Our Clean Energy Future.

“It was exciting to meet him at the pub,” says Francis Vierboom, who remembers being starstruck. Years before, back when Francis launched a drone software startup in Australia, Saul was already in America, flying wind turbines like kites, trailing a reputation for ingenuity that would lead to him helping shape the US Inflation Reduction Act.

“I hadn't actually read the book yet, but I got around to it pretty quickly. The book mentions this idea of having an electric pilot community – and it just made sense.”

So Francis, his friend Kristen McDonald and other core supporters launched the Electrify 2515 campaign. Three years later – with a local pilot up and funded, and over 600 people supporting June’s Go Electric expo in Thirroul – the rest is local history.

Poised for change

Now there’s a new chapter brewing that might make national history books. Electrify 2515 has been pivotal in the government’s decision to locate the state’s first Urban Renewable Energy Zone (REZ) in the Illawarra.

In February, Francis – who began as a volunteer – was appointed CEO of Rewiring Australia, the not-for-profit organisation that oversees the 2515 pilot and supports 75 more communities wanting to electrify across the country. In May, he attended a milestone moment in energy market reform – the Illawarra Urban REZ Roundtable at the University of Wollongong.

“At the roundtable, we saw different people highlight the Electrify 2515 project as one of the exemplar things in the region,” Francis says.

One of those people was NSW Minister for Climate Change and Energy Penny Sharpe, who said the REZ would “leverage the community’s enthusiasm for solar, batteries and EVs to benefit the entire region”. Another was Ty Christopher, Energy Futures Network Director at UOW, event host and a “vehement” supporter of Electrify 2515 from the start.

“One of the greatest things Electrify 2515 has done,” Ty told The Illawarra Flame, “is create postcode envy up and down the South Coast. It’s a good thing, because it starts communities talking about, how do they take control of their own energy?”

For big business, the idea of consumers taking control is likely revolutionary talk of the ‘heads will roll’ variety.

Ty points to the increase in profits for the ‘Big Three’, Origin, AGL and Energy Australia, in the 2023/24 financial year. “This is right at the time when our energy prices have shot up. So year-on-year increase, not total, increase in profits for the Big Three gentailers, who dominate the energy market and operate as a cartel, was $2.5 billion.

“Price gouging by generators and gentailers is the thing that is causing electricity price increases. Everything else is noise.”

Roundtable about reform

Despite a bevy of politicians – including Keira MP Ryan Park and Wollongong MP Paul Scully – at May’s roundtable, revolutions don’t come much quieter than the Illawarra’s Urban REZ. Media invites were limited and news coverage was confused, leaving many not quite sure what the new Urban REZ was, or how it might shake the foundations of corporate profit. Or even that it was a state REZ, so a separate entity from the federal Offshore REZ (other than a narrow coastal area where the two overlap).

For Ty, the Urban REZ is a landmark opportunity for reform, something he’s pushed for for years.

It’s backed by “very, very powerful” state legislation. Essentially, he says, it means that the national grid’s “broken and stupid” planning laws – designed for a time when power flowed one-way – can be ignored, creating a space for innovation to exist in a way that’s fair for all.

“The huge advantage of operating a system like that is – if done right – it could democratise equitable access to locally generated, low-cost renewable energy,” Ty says.

“We as consumers, and indeed, as whole suburbs, can just step away from this entire dysfunctional wholesale electricity market and not participate in it.

“As the saying goes, don't wrestle with a pig, because all that happens is you get dirty and the pig enjoys it. So the way you win is, just don't play the game.”

Illawarra suburbs may now become “little independent energy zones”, storing rooftop solar locally and not drawing from the grid other than a few hours at night. “It's not an off-grid or micro-grid solution. It's what I'd call grid lite,” Ty explains.

Big savings ahead

“The potential is there to shave 20 to 25% off everyone's bills,” Ty says.

“And by everyone, I mean renters, people in social housing, people in apartments, all the people who don't have a roof on which they could put solar for whatever personal circumstance or economic reasons.

“So straight away, by doing that, you democratise access to clean energy, which is not spoken about, but the great inequity of Australia's solar success is that it's established ‘energy haves’ and ‘energy have-nots’ in our community.”

Right now, as NSW heads into peak energy poverty season – when, as the Flame reported last winter, vulnerable pensioners tend to stay in, switch off heat and lights, and wrap up in ‘minky’ blankets – electricity prices are going up.

For Ty, a power systems engineer who came to his university role after four decades in industry, blame lies not only with corporate giants but also energy market regulatory bodies, whose rules do a “really, really poor job” of protecting consumers.

“So the significance of the announcement – and the leaning into an Urban REZ in the Illawarra – means we now have the ability to ignore existing rules and change existing rules where they are not delivering in the best interests of local energy consumers,” he says.

“The main ones would be rules that, for instance, prevent a network company from trading in energy for the network batteries that they have at the moment; rules that prevent a retail company or any other entity, for that matter, from owning fleets of community batteries and operating them for the best interests of the community.”

All change ‘backstage’

The revolution has begun but don’t expect scenes on suburban streets.

“The opportunity for an Urban REZ is a bit of a backstage one,” says Francis, who as Rewiring CEO is looking forward to collaborating with experts from ‘poles and wires’ network operator Endeavour Energy and EnergyCo., the government authority that leads the delivery of REZs.

Visible signs of change might simply be more smart energy solutions.

“So adding more rooftop solar onto car parks,” Francis says, “just like Woolies has done at Fairy Meadow, where they've just commissioned a big set of shade carpark solar panels that have EV chargers built into them, so that the energy that's coming off the solar panels can go straight into cars.”

Householders have nothing to do but go electric. “Get an electric car, get rooftop solar, get a battery on your house, get electric appliances. These are all really good things, and they'll continue to be good things.”

Energy storage options are growing, from homes’ hot-water tanks to incoming vehicle-to-grid (V2G) tech to the Federal Government’s new Cheaper Home Batteries program, set to cut costs by about 30 per cent.

But the beauty of the Illawarra’s Urban REZ is that community-sized storage could cut costs for everyone, not just those with a spare $10k for a household battery.

“It's a really exciting opportunity for the Illawarra to show the rest of the country a model of how the energy system can look,” Francis says.

From pub to politicians’ roundtable

Sitting around a table with the NSW Climate Minister is a long way from that chance encounter with Saul Griffith in a pub three years ago.

“It's been a great journey,” Francis says, buoyed by the willingness of locals wanting to help, put up signs on their homes, stickers on their cars and letterboxes. “People see the clear, compelling logic of the win-win, of lower emissions and lower bills, and they're really excited to tell their neighbours about it.”

Amid the changes, there is a sense of historical inevitability about his path. Even before Francis studied law and IT, launched a tech startup and gathered the entrepreneurial and leadership experience to run Rewiring Australia, the sparky business was in his blood.

“My dad was an electrician. I actually grew up near Wallerawang Power Station where he worked, so I was never very far away from a soldering iron and little batteries and things. My grandfather was the chairman of the electricity commission in New South Wales back in the 70s. So electricity is kind of the family business.”

Today, Francis hopes the Illawarra’s Urban REZ can help lead Australia on to decades of cheap, clean-energy-fuelled growth.  

With Wollongong already fertile ground for energy startups like Hysata, Green Gravity and Sicona Battery Technologies, Ty is on board too: “We are trailblazing… We’re innovative, we've got an engaged community. So if there's a place to prove this up, to then roll it out nationally – we’re the region to do it.”