A major window furnishings company is ushering in a new class of employee benefits by offering its surplus weekend solar energy to staff.
The plan could have Hunter Douglas employees paying some of the lowest electricity prices in NSW.
Under the new employee energy plan, staff will be able to take advantage of the 800kW solar system on the company’s Rydalmere factory rooftop during the weekend and after hours when the system is not powering the factory and offices.
Instead of exporting this surplus energy to the grid, director of finance Peter Hughes said the family-owned company wanted to share its surplus solar with staff.
“We are committed to renewables and our employees’ wellbeing.”
The employee energy plan, which the company claims is an Australian-first, has been made possible by Enosi’s software platform that can trace power constantly from “source to socket”. Energy retailer Simply Energy is using the platform to calculate accurate energy plans for staff.
Traceability is the key that allows the company to share the benefit of excess solar from the factory roof with its employees, Steve Hoy, chief executive of Enosi said.
“As a result, employees can choose clean energy and be paying some of the lowest prices for electricity in the state.”’
Enosi’s Powertracer platform allows anybody to see where energy is coming from and where it is going to, opening the door to a new class of energy products that matches consumer price with its true source.
As Australia transitions to more distributed renewable energy, this technology means customers can opt to use more energy when it’s sunny and solar energy is abundant and cheap.
This is something homeowners or businesses with rooftop solar already do – turn on the washing machine or energy intensive equipment in the middle of the day. Mr Hoy said the technology will unlock load shifting for more customers.
In Hunter Douglas’s case, employees are able to take advantage of a sunny Saturday or Sunday on their bosses’ roof and save themselves 5 cents per kilowatt hour.
Under the deal, the company still gets its feed-in-tariff and is not out of pocket. That’s because the ability to match usage with supply is attractive to the retailer, which is trying to compensate for the high costs to supply electricity on days where generation is limited.
“So the retailer does the deal.”