Escalating electricity costs? Ginormous gas bills? Frightening fees for water usage?

None of these hold any fear at all for Kylie Ahern. For she’s set to become the first Australian living in the centre of a city to go completely off-grid in one swift movement, as part of a routine eight-week renovation of her modest terrace.

“I’m very excited about the idea of living in a house where I don’t have to worry about the electricity bill coming in, or gas,” she says.

“Sometimes you feel quite powerless when so many decisions are being made for you in Canberra or by corporations. So it’s great to have this sense of helping make your own destiny.”

Ahern, 46, a publishing consultant, had been planning for a while to renovate the small two-bedroom house on Oxford Street, Newtown, she bought in 2011 for $636,000. But in the middle of imagining what her new kitchen and bathroom should look like, she wondered if she could push the envelope a little further.

I’m really looking forward to no longer relying on fossil fuels for my energy.Newtown resident Kylie Ahern

Always interested in environmental issues, and a keen recycler, she started thinking what more she could do. She then consulted with environmental lawyer turned sustainability coach and designer Michael Mobbs who last year, after a long, step-by-step renovation, finally managed to go off grid himself.

“Other people have managed it but only by doing it gradually over a long period,” says Mobbs, whose own sustainable house is in Chippendale. “This is the first case I’ve come across where someone is doing it all at once. It’s the ideal way to do it, starting from the ground up, and that makes it very affordable.

“She’s not really a greenie either; she’s just someone who wants a low-cost household. It’s surprisingly easy too, so we’ve decided to film our progress through the renovation, day by day, to show the rest of the country how simple it actually is.”

Domain will be catching up with the pair at regular intervals to chart their progress.

The entire renovation is slated to cost around $150,000 but, with a new kitchen, bathroom and flooring, the actual sustainability element is only a small fraction of the total.

The main features that will allow Ahern to go comfortably off grid include a solar panel system with a battery storage capacity, an 8,000-litre rainwater storage capacity in the backyard to supply drinking water, LED lightbulbs, and plumbing to prepare for future wastewater treatment, recycling and disconnection from the mains sewer.

The house design will involve no unused space, plenty of natural light via a skylight, lots of windows set high in walls, good insulation and draught-proofing throughout the house, and new, high-efficiency appliances.

With Ahern’s quarterly bills currently running at around $206 for electricity, $262 for gas, $199 for fixed water charges and $243 for metered water use, she’s hoping she’ll end up with a massive weekly saving. With no more electricity and gas bills, she’ll also have much lower water costs until she becomes self-sufficient in that too by next year.

In addition, by composting food waste, it’s no longer going into landfill, while keeping stormwater onsite means it won’t be flowing back into rivers and oceans.

“I wanted to use this project as a showcase for what you can do in very simple, practical ways,” says Ahern, who co-founded Australia’s most successful science magazine Cosmos. “The hardest thing for a consumer is thinking, What can I do, and how do I get off the grid?

“It can be very hard to know where to start. But it does seem surprisingly easy. I’m really looking forward to no longer relying on fossil fuels for my energy. I’ll never have to worry about those bills again.”