Victoria’s new SEC to establish one-stop-shops for household electrification

The Victorian Premier, Jacinta Allan, has officially re-launched the State Electricity Commission (SEC) to lead Victoria’s renewable energy transition and encourage and assist households to electrify.

Until the mid 1990s, when it was privatised, the SEC was a publicly-owned utility that provided the state’s power generation, transmission, distribution and supply.

In addition to investing in ways to accelerate the energy transition, the Premier has said the new SEC will support the switch to all-electric households and build a renewable energy workforce that will be essential to electrify at scale.

In recognising the difficulties many people are having electrifying their homes, the Premier has announced that the SEC will establish ‘one-stop-shops’ to assist Victorians to transition their homes to all-electric.

“We know that too many people have been put off electrifying their home because of the complexity and the cost,” says Allan. “We’ll take the guesswork out of the process and step people through the switch and streamline the process for households.”

“We also know that electrifying an older home can be a complicated process with many moving parts,” says Allan. “It can take a lot of time and a lot of effort to match up various products with the right installers, and it’s also very easy to put it just in that too hard basket.”

A one stop shop will be a focused outlet providing information that streamlines and simplifies the process for householders to connect with accredited installers and products, and apply for rebates and incentives.

The SEC will pilot its first one-stop-shop early next year.

Victoria uses more gas in homes than any other state – 80% of Victorian properties are connected to the gas supply – and the Victorian Government has already announced that all new homes must be fully electric from January next year, including all new public and social housing.

Victorians who go all electric can save up to 60% of their power bills. However, the Victorian Government has said it doesn’t want to see these benefits only being delivered to people with the means and upfront capital to electrify.

They’ve also introduced the same all-electric standard for all new public buildings, schools, hospitals, police stations and government owned buildings.

“We want to electrify at scale. We can’t leave it up to chance and governments have to lead by example,” says Allan. “The role for government here is to look at how we can lower the barriers to see something we all see as an individual and collective good.”

A massive workforce will be needed to implement residential electrification at scale, at the same time that every other sector – industry, commercial and transmission expansion – is also electrifying.

To assist Victoria’s transition, the Victorian Premier has also announced that the SEC will help build the skills and training necessary to secure a pipeline of future workers for both the residential and industry sectors. A Center for Training excellence with overall responsibility for coordinating and accrediting courses will be established.

It’s anticipated that 59,000 clean energy jobs will be created in Victoria this way – including 6,000 traineeships and apprenticeships – who will help transition the state to 95% renewable energy by 2035.

“This workforce will be central to building, maintaining and operating the energy assets we need for Victoria’s renewable energy transmission,” says Allan.

Training and skilling up the massive workforce needed to electrify everything is an issue facing every Australian state and territory, and a significant gap in the policies of most governments, according to a recent report by Monash university researchers.

“It takes four years of training to become an electrician or an engineer, so we have absolutely no time to lose. We must take action now to grow Australia’s clean economy workforce,” says Holly Taylor, Head of Strategy and Partnerships at the Energy Efficiency Council (EEC).

The EEC and Clean Energy Council are calling on government to take rapid action to grow the clean economy workforce. They’ve launched the Careers for Net Zero campaign on behalf of a collective of leading industry, educational and civil society organisations to showcase the many career opportunities in decarbonising.

They’ve produced a website to demystify the careers that support a clean economy and the pathways into those careers. Electricians and electrical engineers will obviously be in high demand, but other clean energy jobs will include community engagement advisors, installation installers, accountants, project managers, lawyers, etc.

There will no doubt be competition between the residential, industry and transmission sectors, as well as between states, for some of the jobs.

Holly Taylor warns that “we cannot poach Peter to pay Paula. We need to grow the whole pie to meet our 2050 net zero emissions.”

This article was first published on SwitchedOn, a special project by RenewEconomy focusing on electrification. You can read more here.