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Lots of community centres run on human energy. But South Alive in Invercargill also runs on the sun and that's saving them heaps.
South Alive started back in 2012 and is almost like a 'community headquarters' for locals to use in whatever way they need, whether it's a meeting room, a sense of connection, or a flat white at the newly opened cafe.
As Claire McDonagh tells Mike Casey, being able to provide a community space like this comes at a cost and power made up a huge percentage of its overheads. But with the help of a community grant from the Tiwai Aluminium Smelter, a 60kW system was installed on its sizeable roof by NES.
McDonagh says it's been about a year since the panels were put up. They're now in credit after the summer months and the panels produced plenty of energy in autumn and spring last year.
The building is a Civil Defence hub and they opened up the facilities to anyone who needed help after the big wind event in October last year knocked out a lot of power.
She says batteries are the next logical step as they will be able to keep the building going after a natural disaster.
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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