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Resilience from solar and batteries comes to the fore after more severe weather events, big overseas outages and fossil fuel issues; Australia's electric election offers a glimpse at what next year might look like in New Zealand; US students from Worcester Polytechnic Institute need your help to improve their electrification dashboard; a new 'radically affordable' and 'radically personalisable' EV ute (and its unhinged ad) is launched in the US; and what needs to change so we can re-use big EV batteries in other ways.
Stay strong
With an increasing number of severe weather events occurring (and the potential for more large earthquakes), energy resilience is front of mind for many. And solar and batteries (including the batteries in our EVs) are playing an increasingly important role during emergencies or outages.
Centralised options are often easy and efficient, but we are vulnerable if that is the only option and the whole system fails. In Northland, some were without power for over a week after Cyclone Tam brought down lines and replacement poles were required. In 2023, there was a 1-in-200 year event, followed merely weeks later by Cyclone Gabrielle, which was reported as the costliest cyclone in recorded history for the southern hemisphere.
Two Nissan Leafs kept Gee’s Pharmacy running for days during Cyclone Gabrielle. And SEANZ told stories of homes and businesses with solar and batteries getting through - and helping out when others were out of action.
Lines companies have used recent storms to lobby for changes to regulations around trees near powerlines, which seems to have been successful, while some marae and schools are having solar and batteries installed so they can act as hubs during emergencies (and reduce their bills for the rest of the time).
Overseas, the large outage in Spain and Portugal has people worried (and climate deniers talking about the role of renewables, given renewables supplied 100% of the country's total for the first time a few days before). Black outs are rare but they do happen and they happened a long time before wind and solar. And that’s where a bit of battery-related self-sufficiency doesn’t go astray, so it's good to see more grid-scale options being built here and overseas.
At the other end of the spectrum, we continue to hear stories of places reliant on fossil fuels for energy that are being put in jeopardy - either when the boat doesn’t turn up (like in the Chathams) or the machinery fails (like Palmerston Island in the Cooks).
Electricity outages may get more coverage, but at least we make our electricity here. It pays to remember that as a small nation a long way from anywhere else, New Zealand is basically the Chatham Islands of the world. So what do we do if the boat doesn’t turn up?
The electric election
With the Australian election taking place tomorrow, the Labor government is proposing a 30% subsidy on installation of batteries into Australian homes. Solar Citizens showed that this would save between $10-15,000 in 15 years and reduce the price of a 10kWh battery to around $5k. For a country with so much solar, it makes so much sense.
The other side is proposing to go nuclear, which one energy analyst called ‘batshit crazy’. While the price of solar and batteries keeps dropping, "in much of the world (China being a notable exception), building new nuclear capacity has historically been expensive and slow", often as a result of soft costs and regualtory issues.
From MIT: "It’s easy to point at Plant Vogtle in the US: The third and fourth reactors at that facility began construction in 2009. They were originally scheduled to start up in 2016 and 2017, at a cost of around $14 billion. They actually came online in 2023 and 2024, and the total cost of the project was north of $30 billion."
The Greens also proposed a policy to help landlords install solar, which would ensure a third of Australians don’t miss out on reduced power bills. Rewiring Australia is very keen on that idea, as are its New Zealand cousins.
While we applaud some of the policies coming from the top down, there’s plenty of pressure coming from the bottom up and it’s been amazing to see the 'electrify everything for everyone' message being pushed hard by over 75 community groups connected with Rewiring Australia.
With more than 15 community groups in New Zealand, we're expecting big things from them next year.
Give us your reckons
Students from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in the US have embarked on a cool project alongside Rewiring Aoteraoa and Ara Ake to create a website focused on household electrification, using a lot of our guides and data.
The dashboard aims to motivate people to upfgrade to electric. And they’re looking for some quick survey responses to test how well it works - and to make it even better!
Complete the survey here.
Slated for delivery
As we often say, sustainable products have to be cheaper AND better. Electric machines increasingly tick those boxes, but they are often more expensive upfront and much cheaper to run. Price parity isn't far away but a new car company called Slate is focusing on price, and is taking reservations on a ‘radically simple, wildly personalizable' ute.
“A Slate is a two-door electric pickup truck that’s thoughtfully designed and engineered to be customized again and again to transform into whatever you need it to be, even an SUV. With an expected price of under US$20,000 after federal incentives, it’s radically affordable. We think it’s pretty cool looking, too.”
Check out the specs. And check out one of the best (and most unhinged car ads) we've seen in a while.
The circle of life
Going electric is much less wasteful than burning fossil fuels because we need fewer materials and many of the materials we do need can be re-used or recycled. And a piece in The Conversation shows that old batteries will play an important role in other areas but changes are needed to make it happen.
“By 2030, around 30,000 tonnes of EV batteries are expected to need disposal or recycling in Australia. By 2040, the figure is projected to be 360,000 tonnes and 1.6 million tonnes by 2050.
Is this a problem? Not necessarily. When a battery reaches the end of its life in a vehicle, it’s still got plenty of juice. Together, they could power smaller vehicles, houses or, when daisy-chained, even whole towns.
For this to work, though, we need better information. How healthy are these batteries? What are they made of? Have they ever been in an accident? At present, answers to these questions are hard to come by. That has to change.”
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.