The case for energy loans: read our latest explainer
The rise (and savings) of hot water heat pumps, Fisher & Paykel creates a one-stop-electrification shop, thinking fast and slow on World EV Day, Tesla gets into the train game, Vessev's beautiful boat, Toyota's white elephant, and one positive aspect of keeping up with the Joneses.
There’s something in the water
New Zealand already has a pretty high adoption rate of heat pumps for space heating (approx 1.3m), but hot water heat pumps are relatively new (about 12,000).
They look set to grow pretty quickly, according to Annie Jefferson of A2W in Wellington. She says the company was getting about two enquiries a month around six months ago and it is now getting between 6 and 10 enquiries a week as word gradually spreads about how efficient they are.
Water heating takes around 30% of the total energy load in a home if it has a standard electric resistance cylinder, but because heat pumps are so efficient and are able to turn one unit of energy into 3-4 units of heat, Jefferson says they can reduce bills significantly.
And, just like solar, batteries and EVs, the upfront costs are also coming down.
"A2W can now install an R290 hot water heat pump for around $6,500, down from around $8,500 a year or so ago,” she says.
These systems are also included in many 'green loans', which can make it even more financially viable.
A lot of resthomes and other large institutions are also looking at high temperature hot water heat pump systems to reduce bills and try to get off increasingly expensive gas.
They’re impressive bits of kit, but not as impressive as the world’s biggest heat pump in Helsinki, which will be used to keep 30,000 homes warm as part of its district heating scheme.
On point
Overseas, a number of one-stop electrification shops (as well as quite a few start-ups) have sprung into life to help homeowners navigate the sometimes tricky journey to an electric home.
In New Zealand, there’s still often a gap between education and execution, but the launch of Fisher & Paykel’s Home Solutions looks like a positive step in the one-stop-shop direction.
As Shaun Thompson, general manager of customer experience says, the goal is to help decarbonise homes across New Zealand and Australia through "solar generation, designs for energy-efficient equipment and appliances and, in time, energy management".
"Our goal is to deliver data-backed carbon reduction that saves you money and delivers total comfort," he says.
We’re all about the win-wins, and this feels like one. With a long history of innovation, a reputation for quality and large Chinese owners, it could be a shrewd business move to capitalise on the demand for electric homes and we hope it helps Kiwis remove some of the barriers they face when it comes to electrification.
Thinking fast and slow
It was World EV Day this week (a good example of the Holiday Industrial Complex in action) and ChargeNet put together a video celebrating the journey it’s been on since 2015.
There’s merch on offer if you want to share your favourite charging station on their socials.
And if you want to know how hard it is to build EV fast charging networks and make them remotely reliable let alone profitable, then check out this podcast.
We’re keen to see more fast chargers in New Zealand, but we’re also keen to see more convenient slow chargers.
As one of our colleagues argued: “I am of the opinion that we are getting too distracted with fast charging because we are stuck trying to replace petrol stations … We should design convenient slow chargers throughout communities (supermarkets, beaches, parks etc). These will also be about 1/10th of the cost to build, and have minimal impact on electricity networks compared to fast chargers.”
They will also be cheaper.
Added to that, many new EVs now have over 500km of range, and the average car drives 11,000km a year, or 215km a week.
“That's 4 hours total plugged into a 7kW charger to get all the energy they need per week. The car is probably used for less than 2 hours a day, meaning we need to fit 4 total charging hours into the other 150 hours they have in the week that their vehicle is parked.”
And if things keep improving as they have, we may not even need to stop on that 800km trip, although we’ve never met a human bladder that can last that long.
On track
Tesla is known for its cars. But it’s recently moved into trains, with a new battery electric passenger and freight train launched to transport employees and materials to its factory in Germany.
The Giga Train can charge on electrified tracks and run on battery on non-electrified tracks and it connects to the Tesla station — known as Tesla Süd. It is free to all passengers.
And if you want to know what the Tesla factory looks like when you reach your destination, this video is worth a watch.
Speaking of stunning electric machines, Vessev’s VS-9 has been spotted in the wild again and it’s a thing of stable, efficient beauty.
Sadly, we can’t say the same about Toyota's hydrogen Mirai, which it has just leased to a poor soul who will presumably soon find out how hard and expensive it is to fill up. As energy expert Jay Rosenow says, just as his pipes are 'hydrogen ready' for when it is actually available and cheap, his driveway is also 'Ferrari ready'.
Panel discussion
Keeping up with the Joneses is normally used in a negative way, but an Australian study has shown that there are some benefits: lots more solar.
“There is ample research showing humans are social animals and do care about what their peers are doing. In our new research, we explored this neighbourhood effect in the context of solar panel installations – and found we can quantify it. The effect leads to an extra 15-20 solar installations per postcode per year, on average. Scaled up, that means about 18% of new solar installs come from the neighbourhood effect.”
We love a bit of positive peer pressure.
In the last Electric Avenue of 2025, we look at the two biggest trends in the world of energy; the Government goes electric for its fancy fleet upgrade; Nick Offerman offers his services to a US campaign extolling the virtues of EVs; Australia shows what's possible in new homes when you add solar, batteries and smart tech; a start-up selling portable solar and battery systems that wants it to be as easy and common as wi-fi; and The Lines Company looks to put some solar on the roof of the Ōtorohanga Kiwi House.
Read moreDownloadWhen it comes to electric farming, "the numbers are becoming undeniable," says Nicholson Poultry's Jeff Collings. With 60kW of solar, a Nissan Leaf as a 'farm quad', electric mowers, an electric ute that can run a water blaster, and even a chicken manure scraper made out of a wrecked Tesla that, as Rewiring's Matt Newman says, looks a bit like something out of Mad Max, "almost everything is electric". There aren't many others in New Zealand who have gone this far down the electric road. And, with his electric Stark Varg, the fastest off-road motorbike in the world, he's obviously having plenty of fun on that road, too.
Read moreDownloadRNZ's Kate Newton reports on the "madness" of thousands of new piped gas connections being installed into houses every year, despite dwindling supplies and higher lifetime costs.
Casey said it was positive that the numbers showed people starting to leave the gas network of their own accord, but not all households were in a position to make that choice.
"If we don't plan for a decommissioning of the gas network, then it's going to be a chaotic transition, where vulnerable New Zealanders really suffer."
As the research of Rewiring and others has shown, gas is expensive, it's getting more expensive, it's terrible for your health when burned inside and there are substitutes available right now that, on average, do the same job for less money over the long run for households, would save the country billions on health costs and lost productivity, and don't pump out unnecessary emissions.
Around 300,000 homes and businesses have connections to the gas network (it’s estimated another 300,000 use more expensive bottled gas, mostly in the South Island). The number of active connections has started to decline recently and the country’s largest gas network, Vector, is forecasting no new residential or commercial connections after 2029.
Upfront capital costs are the main barrier for many homes, which is why we're working hard on a low-interest, long-term loan scheme that can be used to pay for electric upgrades, including hot water heat pumps. This would mean paying for a new thing with a loan would be cheaper than paying to run the old thing.
Read more about the scheme here.
Disconnection costs are also a major barrier. We have seen examples where households permanently disconnecting from the network have been charged between $1,000 and $2,000 to have a meter permanently removed (i.e. digging up the pipes to the road), even though it should only cost customers $200 to have the connection capped at the house.
RNZ even reported a case where a business customer was quoted $7,500 but took the case to Utilities Disputes, where complaints about disconnection costs have been rising.
The Australian Energy Regulator and the state of Victoria have now capped the disconnection fees to a few hundred dollars to stop this kind of behaviour and protect households.