The case for energy loans: read our latest explainer
New suburb-wide electrification pilot projects set to kick off in Australia, Fonterra's electrification plan to upgrade its boilers and trial EV tankers, Napier EV charging business Kwetta eyes up global expansion, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi talks about the massive rise of electric taxis, the German balcony solar movement spreads into Spain, and what if fossil fuel cars were the new technology?
This is your pilot speaking.
Australia has led the world on rooftop solar adoption, in large part due to Government support. Now Australia wants to lead the world in electrification pilots that show how “installing solar batteries and replacing gas heaters, cooktops and hot water systems with electric alternatives” can significantly reduce costs and emissions.
The Electrify 2515 project aims to electrify 500 homes in one suburb of New South Wales and asked for applications from residents who were keen to upgrade their homes. Subsidies help to lower the upfront costs of these upgrades and over 400 households have signed up so far.
Now, the hard work of Rewiring Australia (and the support of Senators like ex-Wallaby David Pocock), has resulted in more suburb-wide electrification trials that are set to be rolled out.
This is a big deal in the electrification movement and a clear illustration of the role that government finance - primarily low-interest electrification loans but also, where required, income contingent grants to help give everyone access to these benefits - will play in speeding up the transition away from fossil fuels.
Rewiring Aotearoa is working on establishing our own electrification pilot projects in New Zealand and we will be announcing something in the coming months.
Speaking of loans, the New York Times has reported that “The World Bank, African Development Bank and others are pledging at least $35 billion to expand electricity across a continent where more than a half-billion people still don’t have it. About half of the money will go toward solar 'minigrids' that serve individual communities. The loans will come at below-market interest rates, a crucial stipulation as global lenders usually charge much higher rates in Africa, citing higher risks.”
And speaking of pilots, one of the Rewiring team was in a plane that was hit by lightning recently (and claimed to have technically been flying in an electric plane) and was impressed with the calm and measured voice emanating from the cockpit. If you want to know why they all seem to speak like that, check out this episode of Malcolm Gladwell’s podcast.
Electric milk?
We often talk about picking the low-hanging fruit when it comes to emissions reductions. We need to electrify what we can now, rather than waiting for the harder to decarbonise sectors like aviation, shipping or agriculture or cement to come up with solutions. In the home, using gas makes no sense because it's more expensive, bad for our health and supplies are dwindling and EVs are cheaper over their lifetime than petrol or diesel equivalents. Fonterra is also now trying to get off the fossil fuels and plans to invest $150 million in electrification over the next 18 months.
Fonterra has announced it is converting two of its North Island gas boilers to electricity, lowering its total fossil gas use by around 38 percent. Until now, the dairy giant's focus has been converting coal boilers to wood pellets or electricity.
This is its first major conversion of a gas plant since it announced plans to cut emissions.
The company is also piloting six EV milk tankers and associated charging infrastructure later in the year, and hopefully there are many more to come.
Plugging a gap
Big news in local electric circles this week, with Fullers’ first commercial trip on Vessev’s hydrofoiling electric boat and a successful round of funding for Napier-based EV charging business Kwetta (formerly Redphase).
The NZ Herald reports that Kwetta raised $17 million, with Z Energy now owning 7% of the company.
Kwetta had sold $10m worth of charging outlets across New Zealand, a total of 39 so far, with orders to fill in Australia and interest in Europe.
Its equipment could retrieve 10 times more power from the grid, through its patented technology that connected to the higher voltage end of the grid, co-founder Mike Lazelle told the Herald.
”The power grid, think about it like a network of pipes. Our technology can unkink the pipe upstream so we can get more power out of the grid.”
Blackbird was also an investor in this round and principal James Palmer said in a statement: “With early evidence that buses and trucks are flipping to EV, we think this is a winning strategy and positions them for category leadership in the most valuable segment of the market.”
Buses and trucks make up the majority of total kilometres driven and electrifying them will be a crucial part of the transition away from fossil fuels. It’s good to see more battery electric options like the Windrose, more councils embracing electric buses and more companies like Kwetta finding ways to charge them all.
Ride share
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi was interviewed recently by the Wall St Journal and we were interested in his comments on the electrification of taxis. He raised some interesting figures about how Uber drivers are adopting EVs five times faster than private users and they also drive five times further than private users.
EVs purchased is a good metric to show adoption curves, but perhaps we should also be looking at the number of EV kilometres driven.
Our research shows that the more you drive, the more you're likely to save with an EV, although that will depend on how the cars are charged, with fast charging being the most expensive option.
Maybe local taxi drivers are a good market for Genesis, which bought a majority stake in Chargenet last year and offers customers discounts on fast charging with its EVerywhere add onelectric uber.
Going up
Solar is growing in every European nation, as this Ember data shows.
And it’s being installed in some interesting places. We mentioned vertical solar panels on farms in last week’s edition of Electric Avenue, and the Germans have been looking to their balconies to install DIY plug-in solar.
More than 1.5 million of them have installed them and the law has even been changed to ensure tenants have access to it. Not surprisingly, there’s also a name for it: Balkonkraftwerk (balcony power plant).
These systems are also proving popular in Spain, where two thirds of the population live in apartments. There is more vertical space than roofspace available with all these high rise buildings and rooftop systems are more complicated to consent and install, so it makes good sense to use what’s available.
These systems are cheap to buy, plug into the domestic network with a converter and can reduce power bills by around 30%. As we often say at Rewiring, a lot of a little is a lot and this is just another piece of the electrification puzzle.
Thought experiment
Mike Casey’s opinion piece in Newsroom sought to answer the question of why EVs weren’t more popular in New Zealand. And Andrew Brooks sought to answer a different question in this post on the NZ EV Owners Facebook page: what if it was the other way around and the incumbent technology was electric vehicles?
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.