Look up 

The stars continue to align for solar and, as Jack Tame said on Newstalk ZB, it’s largely because it’s so cheap. 

New Zealand is starting from a low base, but the message is hitting home here, too, and a big install just got switched on at the Port of Auckland, with more to come. 

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This is the port's first large-scale solar installation, and currently the biggest in Auckland's CBD. The 1,344 solar panels are expected to produce around 876 MWh of renewable electricity annually. That’s enough to power about 100 homes, or roughly six percent of the port’s current grid energy use.

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It’s a major milestone in our push to reduce emissions and strengthen the resilience of our power network. As ports around the world transition to low-carbon futures, this is a significant step towards our own electrification goals.

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We're also planning more solar installations, including on the roof of our main building at Fergusson Wharf as part of its refurbishment.

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Last year, research from AUT showed that the 14 biggest rooftops in Auckland would generate more electricity than the country’s biggest solar farm and the same amount of solar power could be distributed “evenly to communities by utilising the rooftops of schools and supermarkets, totalling 167 buildings”. 

In some countries, it is now compulsory to put solar on new structures like car parks (and, a bit like Kiwisaver, it requires some fairly good evidence to opt-out). In Germany, they’re even putting panels alongside motorways. 

There are also lots of large farm buildings crying out for solar and we’re in agreement with Federated Farmers that we should be putting more solar on rooftops and unproductive land, rather than turning productive land into solar farms.  

We shouldn’t forget our small residential rooftops, either. A lot of a little is a lot and, in Australia, the panels that are now on more than one in three homes now accounts for over 12% of the country’s total electricity generation. The UK has mandated all new residential buildings will need to have solar installed, starting in 2027.

More electrons

Solar and batteries are energy technologies, where their efficiency can potentially improve at Moore’s Law levels, just like computers (that isn’t the case with fossil fuels). And researchers in New Zealand are leading the way and potentially hitting levels never seen before in solar panels. 

As B2B News reported, Victoria University’s Dr Nate Davis says his work points to a possible 44% conversion rate, exceeding the widely accepted 32% threshold.

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“It’s something people have been trying to solve for 30 years. It’s a big, big problem, with our technology, theoretically you can get to 44%” he said.

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The key to Davis’s success lies in a process called singlet fission, which allows a single high-energy photon to produce two electrons instead of one—dramatically increasing power output. While the principle has been explored in elite labs before, Davis has applied it in a new way, within hybrid solar cells made from perovskites and organic/inorganic nanomaterials.

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The thought of having solar panels on all kinds of surfaces is compelling and, as the price drops, it’s starting to come true and even being used for fencing, but Davis says the “solar panels could be produced using existing printing technology, potentially avoiding traditional factory-based manufacturing”. 

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“Some of the guys we talked to in America have the old Kodak facilities and they’re making solar panels on the Kodak printers,” he said. “If we could print solar panels that are more efficient than silicon, they would just put them everywhere.”

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Home fires not burning

We’re going to need a massive number of tradies to electrify everything, and that will require a fair bit of training as installers move away from gas systems and towards cheaper, cleaner electric equivalents. So how do you incentivise more people to get involved and learn the ropes? Start at Home has found a way in the UK.

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“This project, in partnership with the Scottish and Northern Ireland Plumbing Employers' Federation (SNIPEF), piloted a practical solution to bridge the gap between training and real-world installation – a common barrier in the industry – by allowing newly trained installers to fit an air source heat pump in their own home. This provided them with practical experience in a low-risk environment, helping them become more confident and competent when entering the retrofit heat pump market.

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Octopus Energy has also invested £10 million in a heat pump R&D and training facility in the UK, where it hopes to train up 1000 heatpump installers.

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Get smart

The Electricity Authority’s announcement about paying customers with solar and batteries more fairly for peak exports and requiring time of use plans was welcome news for New Zealanders. We need a smarter, two-way energy system to avoid or defer unnecessary infrastructure costs and we can do it by embracing new technology and getting the settings right. But using the existing poles and wires more efficiently was a thing way back when the first era of electric cars was underway, as this post from energy consultant Jan Rosenow shows. 

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Wheels of fortune

We’ve written a fair bit about electric buses and in the US, one of the big opportunities is with electric school buses. Despite the electric carnage over there, all is not lost, as this clip showing some new electric buses in Harrisburg shows. 

A startup in the US called Zum is also aiming to turn electric school buses into massive grid batteries and hopes to electrify 10,000 school buses over the coming years, with Oakland kicking things off.

As this Canary Media story said: "Electric school buses can charge with low-cost power and discharge spare capacity at times of grid stress, when power is both more expensive and more likely to be generated by fossil-fuel-fired power plants.” That’s good for the economics of electric school buses. And it’s also good for the grid.”