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We've been banging on about the no-brainer that is solar on schools for a while now. It's the perfect use case given the majority of energy is used during the day and now $30 million will be spent to get 500 schools running on the sun.
The Government announced the funding as part of the Budget and shared more details this morning at an event in Christchurch. EECA will put in $20 million and another $10 million is coming from the Ministry of Education (but funding for solar and batteries on marae will stop at the end of this year).
EECA modelling using a 30kW system (which is the standard size for a school, but seems pretty small given the amount of roof space available) show they could save around $8,000 per year on their bills.
Education Minister Erica Stanford made the right noises at the stand up about the savings from operational budgets being put back into other areas in the schools to help kids, something we've advocated for strongly.
Selected schools will also get batteries for resilience reasons and Energy Minister Simeon Brown talked up the role that schools could play as emergency hubs.
Batteries can also feed back into the grid in the evening peak and charge at night rates for the morning peak, while schools cane export over the summer months. Exporting energy could generate an estimated $6.7m in revenue over 10 years.
The first installs will be done over the summer school holidays and will be focused on schools facing the biggest energy bill increases, including some schools replacing their diesel boilers.
Future Budgets will need to allocate more money to keep the installs rolling, so we hope this just stage one and that our approximately 2,500 schools will all be set up to save - and that the 16% of the population at a school every day gets to learn more about energy through this tangible demonstration.
Read more about the scheme here ⚡https://loom.ly/59xuzNc
When Mike Casey bought his house near Cromwell, it came with gas bottles on the side of the home for water and an expensive diesel system for the underfloor heating. He replaced both of them with a Steibel Eltron system and it's been saving him money ever since. As technical manager Bhawesh Singh told him at the Electrify Queenstown conference, there has been a big influx in enquiries from homes looking to get off the molecules and onto electrons.
Read moreDownloadConfidence that cutting regulations to make solar power more accessible - won't jeopardise people's safety. A new Regulation Ministry reports laid out a potential blueprint to legalise plug-in solar and reduce the time and cost of panel installation. Rewiring Aotearoa CEO Mike Casey shares his thoughts with Andrew Dickens.
The burgeoning demand for solar was also a chance to address a mismatch between the numbers of training opportunities available and young people searching for work, Casey said. "The mums of New Zealand are telling me that there's not enough apprenticeships for their kids and the solar installers of New Zealand are telling me there's not enough trained people."
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