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We keep seeing examples of farmers taking energy into their own hands, saving money and increasing their resilience and Tim Campbell of Ernest Energy is one of the people helping them do it down south.
At Clover Milk Dairies in Hedgehope, his company has installed a 75kW array on some unproductive land and it's in a relatively unique configuration.
"It was a hedgerow that needed to be knocked down, so essentially we've used that land quite nicely between the main cow lank and main tanker track."
The hot water cylinders all operate during the middle of the day - something we recommend all homes with solar do - the effluent system is now also used between milkings, and the solar also plays a role when it comes to keeping the milk cool.
While the farm doesn't yet have batteries, they can be added later. But McPherson Dairies down the road has installed 100kwH of battery storage that can charge up on cheap night rates or solar during the day and discharge when milking and for cooling.
Campbell says the solar and battery set up there will take around six and a half years to pay off, including borrowing costs and claiming depreciation on the asset.
"But the resilience piece is the hard part to value."
New Zealand has passed the "tipping point" where most people buying solar panels will save more money than they spend on them, researchers say, but more could be done to unlock households' ability to make use of solar power. Josh Ellison, research lead for Rewiring Aotearoa, said the country was one of the first where the electrification of homes and vehicles could deliver cost-of-living savings and reductions in emissions at the same time. He said the tipping point was probably passed about three years ago but has now been crossed for battery storage systems, too.
There can't be too many off-grid MPs in the world, but Celia Wade-Brown is one of them and she's the latest candidate in our ongoing series Political Power, where we get up close and personal with our elected representatives about their energy use.
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