Operation Laser Kiwi: help us take New Zealand-made energy on the road
Research overseas has shown that gardening gear can be a gateway drug for electrification. People often start small with a lawnmower or a weed eater, figure out that the tools perform better than petrol equivalents (without the fumes, noise or starting issues), and then they gain the confidence to upgrade some of the larger machines in their home. Mike Casey uses electric Stihl tools on his cherry orchard and he was like a kid in a candy shop at the Fieldays tent looking at all the new electric toys on offer. Just a couple of years ago, Stihl's product manager Phil Needham says it would have been full of petrol products, but now it's mostly batteries. There are still some petrol options for "the diehards", but it's clear where things are heading.
Sales of petrol lawnmowers are definitely falling away across the board, he says; its electric auger for post hole drilling has more grunt that the petrol version; and its largest electric chainsaw is 30% faster than equivalent petrol products.
Casey says his electric weed eater would probably get 1,000 hours of use every year and while he doesn't bother using the leaf blower for the leaves as there are just too many of them on the orchard, he did manage to blow some snow off the solar panels when the price of power was quite high, so it basically paid for itself.
Australia reaches a milestone in August, with more new electric cars sold than petrol cars; another new study shows EV batteries last longer than the myths have made out; Heart Aerospace sends the world's heaviest electric plane skywards; China's massive mining machine hits the dirt; and we've fully embraced heat pumps to warm the air, now they're coming for our water.
Read moreDownloadNew Zealand spends about as much on petrol and diesel as it earns exporting concentrated milk. Mike Casey says that money leaves the country, and most of it does not have to. He runs a cherry orchard in Central Otago on 21 electric machines, and a $50,000 diesel bill became a $25,000 revenue stream before financing costs. What I Asked Mike👉 How much money does New Zealand lose every year buying fuel from offshore?👉 What did it actually cost to electrify 21 machines?👉 What is the real payback period, machine by machine?👉 What can you do if you lease your building and cannot touch the roof?👉 Who should not do this?
Read moreDownloadA pinch and a punch (and a big bunch of new EVs) for the first of the month. The Rewiring gang is always pretty jazzed about the release of the new car sales numbers each month and, while the short-term stats tend to bounce around a bit, the long-term trend is clear: sales of new EVs are up by 150% year to date and sales of new petrol vehicles are down by 15% in the same period.
Read moreDownload
