Power Shift: How a sparkie and a finance guy are changing home energy for good

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23 July 2025

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5 min read

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It started with a beer at a barbecue; some idle chat, and a smart meter installed on a horrible old fuse board. From this unlikely origin, two friends, Julyan (Julz) Collett, a sparkie with deep field experience, and Danny Purcell, an investment wizard and entrepreneur, found themselves on a five-year journey that led to the creation of what they believe is the world’s first smart panel. Not just a panel that manages circuits, but a system that reimagines how electricity flows, saves you money, and puts power back in your hands.

The idea that became Basis didn’t come in a single moment of brilliance. "It’s a fascinating start to a story," Julz recalls. "You’ve got a sparkie. I’m a tradie. And you’re that mad entrepreneur."

Julz had spent his career wiring homes and solving real-world electrical problems. Danny, meanwhile, had a sharp eye for systems, scale and startups. What began as offhand chats quickly evolved into marathon sessions of questions, sketches and prototypes.

"I think I was getting frustrated that I couldn’t figure out how you got all of the insights and control into the electricity industry," Danny admits. "It started to unfold, just bit by bit, and I saw a real opportunity."

Their mission was simple but ambitious: to make energy effortless and affordable for everyone.

Basis | Meet The Makers

The shift came during the first COVID lockdown. With both of them working from makeshift home offices - spare rooms and dining tables - those chats turned into proper experiments.

"It was probably the photo you showed me," Danny says. "Just a photo of your day-to-day as an electrician. And that’s what did it."

The switchboards Julz worked with daily were outdated. Designed for another era, they hadn’t kept pace with the way homes were evolving. As electrification accelerates and the demand for renewable energy grows, the grid and everything connected to it has come under pressure.

"You put it simply," Danny remembers, quoting Julz: "Switchboards are the last thing in the home to have anything happen to it."

What followed was a bold plan. As Danny describes it;

"We had to make them intelligent. We had to make them affordable. We had to deliver value to the customer. And most importantly, we had to set electricians up for success."

That meant a complete reimagining of the electrical switchboard.

Not just hardware, but an entirely new software-based system that made energy management seamless. Their guiding principle? Put insight and control back into the hands of homeowners and sparkies alike.

Julz had long felt that sparkies were being overlooked. They played a critical role but rarely had the tools or recognition they deserved.

"Sparkies are the trusted consultants for the everyday person. They don’t even realise their own value."

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Of course, having the vision was one thing. Making it real was something else entirely.

"I cast my mind back to the original timeline," Danny says, laughing. "Eighteen months, we said. Yeah. Maybe double that."

Instead, it took five years of long days and late nights, countless prototypes, endless system maps and sketches, early conversations with wholesalers, and real-time feedback from sparkies.

"It was a complex puzzle to pull together," Julz says.

They often got asked why no one had done it before. For them, the answer was simple. It was hard. Really hard. "What we’ve done is collapse $20,000 to $30,000 worth of gear into something that can be installed for $4,000 to $5,000," Danny explains.

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And it wasn’t just a technical challenge. It meant breaking old business models. "We had to kill the way products are distributed," Danny says. "That shift alone was almost tectonic."

They called it the Basis smart panel. But it's more than a smart switchboard. "It’s a smart energy system," says Danny.

It delivers real-time insights into how a home uses electricity, down to the circuit. It enables automation and allows users to shift loads to cheaper time periods, reducing power bills with little effort. In Danny’s own home, simply adjusting the way they heated water will save over $1,500 a year.

"The features are profound," he says. "And the savings are real."

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Among its capabilities, the panel can identify the most cost-effective electricity plan for individual homes. "Think of it like having Power Switch in your pocket," Danny adds.

But for Danny, this was always about more than just saving money. A childhood near-miss with electrocution had left a deep impression. "We could make homes fundamentally safer," he says. "And the technologies already exist to solve these problems.  They just hadn’t been organised properly."

Julz has always been clear: the goal isn’t just to put a new panel on the wall. It’s to change the way energy is experienced.

"It’s about giving people back control," he says, "and giving sparkies the tools they need to deliver better outcomes for their customers."

This mission also nudged them toward something bigger. If every home had a smart panel, it wouldn’t just make life easier for sparkies and safer for homeowners, it could actually help ease the strain on a grid not designed for the clean energy age.

Basis wasn’t only about redesigning the switchboard - it was a step toward enabling a smarter, more dynamic energy system from the ground up.

Now, after five years, they feel like they’re finally at the start line.

"We can now introduce what we believe is the world’s first smart panel," Danny says. "It’s been an epically challenging journey. But now we can begin."

Check them out at wearebasis.com or view their product range here.