About
I've been an environmental scientist since 1998 — measuring things, assessing constraints, and working out whether what was promised on paper survives contact with a real site.
More recently that's included certification as an Exemplar Global Lead Environmental Auditor, and in 2024, environmental compliance audits at a solar farm in Queensland and a grid-scale battery here in the ACT.
The job is always some version of the same question: is this actually doing what it said it would?
Then I put solar on my own roof, and realised nobody was asking that question about my house. So I measured it for a year. Behind the Meter is what I found, and what I've learned since.
What I found, to be going on with
That gap is the whole subject. Not generating more — catching more of what you already generate. Most of what I write comes back to it.
How I handle numbers
Old habit, and it's the useful part of an audit background. Every figure here is marked as one of three things:
They never get mixed silently. If a number can't be traced to one of those three, it doesn't get published — I'd rather leave a gap than fill it convincingly.
You won't find a guaranteed savings figure anywhere on this site. Nobody can promise you one and mean it, because it depends on your tariff, your roof and your habits. Ranges with the assumptions showing, or nothing.
Why I built Powermind
Measuring my own house told me the problem wasn't generating more power. It was catching more of what I already generated — running the hot water, the car charger and the aircon while the sun was actually on the roof.
Doing that by hand means paying attention at the right hour, every day, forever. Nobody sustains that. So I built software to do it instead.
Powermind is the science put into practice — the same measurements, automated. It's not a separate business that happens to sit next to the writing; it's the same work, one step further on.
Which is also why I'll tell you when something isn't worth buying, including something of mine. The sources here are linked and the arithmetic is shown so you can check it rather than take my word for it.
Credentials
- Environmental scientist, practising since 1998
- Exemplar Global Certified Lead Environmental Auditor (ISO 14001)
- Master of Environmental Science, Macquarie University
- Bachelor of Applied Science, University of Canberra
- Founder, Futerra — an independent Australian software company. Powermind is its first product.
Get in touch
Reply to any edition of the newsletter and it comes straight to me — I read every one, and they shape what I write next. Otherwise: jason@futerra.ai.
If you've got solar, a heat pump, an EV or a quote you're weighing up, I'm genuinely interested in what your numbers look like.