EV Salary Boost: it's a pay rise you can drive!
We've seen electric cherries and electric chickens. How about electric piggies? CJ and Tim Lepper run a pig farm in Taranaki and, like a growing number of clever rural folk, they realised that solar was a slam dunk for their business.
Working with FarmGen, it installed a 1.8 megawatt system at a cost of around $1.5 million and CJ says that investment could be paid off in as little as five years.
Solar can slash bills for farmers overnight because it allows them to avoid high grid electricity costs but, with plenty of space for bigger systems, export revenue can also be significant. For them, selling a year’s worth of energy to the market at normal prices could bring in $200-250,000 each year.
It’s not just the solar that’s smart, either. The Leppers also have a system to turn the manure from 3,500 pigs into fertiliser and biogas. The biogas is sent to a 40kW generator that heats water to keep the piglets warm and Tim says it takes care of around 30% of the electricity bill.
While biogas can make sense on some farms because there’s an opportunity to turn waste into revenue, it is not a viable substitute for the gas network as there’s so little of it available and it’s more expensive than standard gas.
Along with taxes, education and health, energy is proving to be a big talking point in the run up to the election .. which is now 33 days away. All the political parties have released some energy policies .. and while they're quite varied in their approaches .. the main focus seems to be bringing down the cost of electricity for us consumers. Our first guest would like electric transport to also be part of the conversation .. he's calling for a 'great EV comeback' and has some ideas about how to make it happen. Mike Casey, Rewiring Aotearoa Chief Executive joins Jesse.
The electric election continues apace! National announced its 'Electrify NZ 2.0 plan' last week and Mike Casey joined Andrew Dickens on Newstalk ZB to talk about the potential for peer-to-peer trading of energy, the roll of solar in lowering power prices, data centres needing to bring their own generation, and the likelihood that all this talk will turn into action.
