Changing the Paradigm: Micro Energy for a Macro Challenge

Every time I fly into Adelaide and take a taxi down Sir Donald Bradman Drive, I look out for the Adelaide Electric Supply Company buildings. They are a reminder that electricity in its early days was generated locally, stored in batteries and distributed as direct current.

The historic listing of those buildings notes how, in the 1930s, AESCo hired out electric stoves and hot water services, encouraging households to replace their gas appliances with electric ones. Edison himself imagined a future where everything was electrified. He even worked on an electric car before Ford standardised the combustion engine and mass production. Our energy system could have evolved very differently. We were so close to an alternative paradigm.

Questioning the Paradigm

What strikes me is how much our mindset shapes our options. Paradigms help us normalise, prioritise and focus, but they can also trap us.

Today, we often perceive complexity when the opportunity is, in fact, simplicity. For example, renewable energy is the cheapest form of generation, yet household bills continue to rise. That is not due to the cost of generation but rather the way our current market operates, with marginal pricing setting wholesale costs. It is an anomaly of centralised generation and distribution, not a true reflection of renewable economics.

Similarly, the so-called "primary energy fallacy" is another paradigm trap. The idea that we must replace every unit of fossil fuel energy with an equal unit of renewable energy is misleading. Fossil fuels waste a significant share of their energy as heat, while technologies like electric vehicles and heat pumps can deliver the same services with far less input. In reality, we may only need to replace about a third of our current hydrocarbon energy with renewable electricity to achieve the same outcomes.

From Macro to Micro

Why must energy be aggregated and transmitted over long distances when it can be produced and consumed locally? Renewable generation, when scaled to local needs, can be both more efficient and more resilient.

This isn’t just theory for me. Over a decade ago, I pictured a home powered by solar, supported by batteries, and connected to the grid in two directions. Today, I live in that reality. My household solar and storage already cover daily and overnight use, even through a cold winter. Soon, with a bi-directional charger for my electric car, my home will operate as a true nano grid, sometimes drawing from the wider system, often supplying into it, and always balancing my family’s needs efficiently.

This is not just for the privileged few. With current rebates, zero-interest loans and EV incentives, these solutions are increasingly accessible.

Opportunities for Business and Industry

The principle applies far beyond households. Any business can shift from spending money on energy to making money from it. Local backup generation and storage can make sites self-sufficient, while distributed energy resource software can knit together rooftop solar, batteries and demand response to unlock new revenue streams.

For regional and industrial applications, modular technologies like flow batteries or waste-to-energy systems bring local resources into play. In Western Australia, for example, we are developing micro-scale plants that turn local waste and biomass into renewable fuel, creating jobs and delivering energy security. Portable solar, storage and renewable fuels can extend these benefits even further, particularly in areas without reliable grid infrastructure.

A Digital Dimension

Digitalisation is key to making all of this work. In process industries, operational technology has long integrated local controllers into advanced user interfaces. That model is far better suited to distributed energy than the centralised, add-on heavy approaches of IT enterprise systems. By learning from operations technology, we can create energy systems that are flexible, integrated and designed to scale from micro to macro as required.

The Call to Reframe

Our current paradigms are not wrong, but they are limiting. Centralised generation and distribution built the world we know, and it continues to underpin global industries. But we are at a point where micro-scale solutions can complement and extend that model, unlocking new efficiency, resilience and opportunity.

So, I leave you with three questions:

• Why should you, or your business, be paying for energy when your energy system could be making you money?
• What if your waste could be your fuel?
• What if micro, not macro, became the new normal?

Changing the paradigm is not about abandoning what has brought us here. It is about broadening our perspective, embracing local opportunities and building a more resilient, efficient and sustainable energy future.