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Mike Casey’s Rewiring Aotearoa comes to mind first. His team have brought electrification to the fore – powering everything from cherry orchards to pump sheds. Banks are following, lining up with green-lending incentives for solar rollout. 

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But the real lightbulb moment for me wasn’t the panels – it was the battery behind them.

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And it doesn’t have to be lithium-ion. Think of hot-water cylinders and chilled-water tanks as thermal batteries. On dairy farms, they store heat for wash-downs or cold for milk chilling – two assets you already need. 

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Add a modest 30 kW solar array, feed surplus power into those vessels, and you cut peak-grid draw. Slip an electric UTV (or even Elon’s Cybertruck) into the yard, reconfigure water tanks and you’re shifting more load off the grid.

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Like the tradie with his van of DeWalt, you do have to stump up upfront. You’ll spend $60-100k on panels, inverters and storage. But payback typically lands well inside a 10-year warranty. 

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Better still, thermal batteries smooth spikes, trim energy bills and sidestep network outages. Given the fragility of the national grid, that’s a solid example of energy self-sufficiency.

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