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Victorian Family To Live Bill Free And Rent Free For A Year

08 December 2017

The search is on for a Victorian family to live in a ground-breaking energy-smart house with no rent and no power bills for a year.

The House with No Bills will be built by Mirvac and is a home without energy or gas bills. The home will look, feel and operate just like a typical home, but has been designed to reduce its reliance on electricity to the point it will not generate any electricity bills.

The house will include increased roof insulation, solar PV panels, LED lighting, energy efficient appliances and smart metering and monitoring systems that will help homeowners keep track of their energy use.

The house will be built in partnership with the CSIRO's Evergen team, and will feature CSIRO-developed intelligent energy management, which uses solar and batteries, along with Schneider electric smart home automation to reduce reliance on energy from the grid.

Mirvac will conduct a long-range study to track the energy usage within the home, to uncover how average families consume energy and how the house design and associated sustainable technology performs.

The Andrews Labor Government is reducing energy costs and greenhouse gas emissions for households and businesses through the recently released Energy Efficiency and Productivity Strategy.

The strategy is investing $8.9 million to improve energy efficiency regulations for new homes, strengthen compliance for the as-built quality of homes, and promote zero net carbon homes through volume home builders.

Initiatives such as House with No Bills and the Volume Home Builders program will be critical to lowering emissions across the residential sector and will facilitate the construction of Zero Net Carbon homes in Victoria.

Between now and 2050, an estimated two million new homes are expected to be built in Victoria.

For the opportunity to live bill-free for a year, visit http://www.mirvac.com/housewithnobills/External Link

Quotes attributable to Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change Lily D’Ambrosio

“This is about setting energy efficiency standards that will deliver low-emissions homes with low bills for Victorians for years to come.”

“This is an exciting opportunity for one lucky family, and will provide valuable information about cost of living and energy affordability.”

Quote attributable to Mirvac CEO and Managing Director Susan Lloyd-Hurwitz

“This is an important experiment to understand how can we deliver a house with no bills to market at a price that works for Australian families. The first step is testing to learn more about how we can deliver more affordable and sustainable housing on a mass scale.”

Reviewed 19 August 2020

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