Sometimes there are events that at the time seem rather insignificant but can lead to life changing opportunities. For example, a power outage – a good old fashioned blackout. How many people have changed their lives because of a blackout?
At least one, probably more, but this story is about Brent Clark, Co-founder of Wattblock and his life changing opportunity. Wattblock assists owners corporations to reduce energy consumption on common property saving owners corporations hundreds if not thousands of dollars a year.
“Electricity costs are high and gas prices are about to double. We need to be finding alternative ways to cut energy consumption to reduce the costs. In existing buildings around Australia a staggering 45 percent could be saved on gas and electricity costs – that’s $2 billion on gas and $3.6 billion on electricity,” Brent explained.
It all started in 2011 when Brent was an owner/occupier in an apartment in Chatswood. The strata committee was Chaired by an owner/investor who was not keen on communicating with the other owners or tenants. Ausgrid arranged with the Chair to do some electrical works on the apartment block’s power supply necessitating a complete three-day power shutdown. The Chair failed to tell anyone.
“You can imagine how underprepared anyone was for this. People began to temporarily move out, they had to throw out food. It was a disaster.”
“There was a revolt, the Chairperson made a quick exit and reluctantly I was elected as Chair. I didn’t realise it at the time but it was the beginning of a very exciting journey.”
One of the first things that Brent did was review the electricity costs to see if the fault that lead to the power outage was costing the building. He noticed an increase in energy prices over six years and realised they weren’t due to any fault. Everyone else was suffering the same increases across NSW.
Hearing about Willoughby Council’s Climate Clever Apartments program, Brent arranged for a free energy audit. Something he says can be expensive. The audit lead him to make 13 changes resulting in a remarkable 77 percent reduction in the building’s gas and electricity costs over the past six years.
It was the cost of the energy audit that prompted Brent, together with school friend and co-founder Ross McIntyre, to start Wattblock.
“We wanted to reduce the costs of the reports and assist other strata schemes find ways of saving on their energy consumption costs.”
The business has grown since starting in late 2014 and in 2016 won the SCA (NSW) Innovation of the Year award – a great achievement for a young business.
It’s not hard to see why when you look at what they have done. Since starting, Wattblock has completed 1,000 energy reports, managed retro fits for 25 buildings, opened an office in Brisbane and received grants for innovation from the NSW Government and City of Sydney.
“We recently received an Environmental Innovation Grant to look at electrical vehicle charging stations in strata.”
“We visited San Francisco to see how this could work. One particular building, now completed, was being marketed off the plan with 25 electrical vehicle charging stations. The developers were flooded with people wanting to purchase an apartment because of the charging stations so they changed the plans and installed 45 stations.”
Brent wants property developers to take note that there are opportunities to rethink their buildings so they operate efficiently for the people who will eventually live in them.
“The demand is there but developers never operate properties, they just build them. I’m looking forward to the new NABERS scheme for residential apartments starting as this may assist changing developers’ mindsets for the better.”
No one could have predicted one power outage could lead to so much innovation and positive change.