The 'Electric Election': energy policies, side by side
There's a fair bit of money sloshing around the rural sector at the moment and we've been trying to convince more farmers to spend some of it on solar and batteries - and for the Government to change the rules so that more farmers can play a role in the energy system. Matt Luscombe, the CEO of FarmGen, is helping with that.
FarmGen's proprietary approach requires less steel and takes about half the time to install than a traditional ground mount system. That lowers the install cost to around $1,000 - $1,100 kW, or around 30% lower than the average rate.
It's incredibly simple, he says, and the trellis roof set-up relies on screwing piles into the ground. As it has so many anchors, there's strength in numbers and it can handle winds of up to 300 km/h.
FarmGen has also started bringing in his own batteries and, as he went to China and can cut out the middle man, he can sell at around $450 kw/h, or around half the current rate.
The batteries are guaranteed for 10,000 cycles. And while he couldn't sell one last year, there's a lot more interest now, in part because farmers are cottoning on to the resilience benefits.
He says the payback for solar alone is around four to five years for solar and six to seven with a battery.
And how do these systems go in the winter?
"There's enough sun to keep the mould off and enough rain to keep the dust off, so you don't really need to touch them."
At Fieldays, Luscombe said it had already installed 25 systems, with more than that booked in and many more discussions had at the event.
As Mike Casey says, "there no need for an LNG terminal with you. You'll solve New Zealand's energy crisis yourself, right?"
"Yeah, that's the idea."
BloombergNEF says sales of combustion cars peaked in 2017 and there's no coming back, while a new study in New Zealand shows petrol vehicles were losing value more quickly than equivalent models did a decade ago; big batteries aren't just for storing electricity, they can also store heat; the story of the world's biggest electric ferry and the Australian company that made it; electric motorbikes are doing a lot of heavy lifting on emissions reduction, so why don't they get more attention?; and a new show called HallowGreen2 that tackles the energy transition "with music, humour and a hopeful message”.
Read moreDownloadRNZ's Kate Newton looks at why no-one is really talking about emissions as an election issue. As Mike Casey said: "The climate movement up until this point has been very, very good at creating dartboards, but terrible at providing people with darts to play the game." That's allowed for inaction, and active lobbying against climate change action from fossil fuel companies and others who stand to lose out ... The solution is "flipping it into a strong economic narrative that they can't possibly fight with".
Read moreDownloadHumans are comparative creatures and they're particularly comparative during election season. That's why we've created a rundown of all the energy-related election policies that have been announced by the parties so far.
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