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Annie Jefferson from A2W is always in hot water.
Through A2W, she's a staunch advocate for hot water heat pumps, which are quickly growing in popularity here like they have in Australia, and a big supporter of the community electrification movement.
She can often be found at electrification events - from Electrify Wairarapa to Electrify the Hutt - explaining the latest tech for water and space heating and running people through the process of upgrading old cylinders or retrofitting gas systems.
Heat pump technology can significantly reduce energy bills (and the country's emissions) and she has grasped that installing them is also a big business opportunity. We're going to need a lot of trusted tradies to nail our electric transition and, as demand ramps up, the herding mentality takes hold and the community movement continues to push things in an electric direction, the business owners who embrace it early, like Jefferson, and the entrepreneurs who develop companies to solve customer problems, stand to benefit the most.
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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