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From solar on schools to solar in schools as Wakari and Waiheke bring energy into the classroom; electric farms get a boost and rural solar proven to have other benefits; Vessev goes global with first international order; Hutt City Council unveils a special electric rubbish truck; take a trip on the 'electric slide'; 16 solar myths debunked; and Norway's hypocrisy makes for good comedy.
We’ve been talking a fair bit about the promise of solar on schools recently and we loved the work of Peter and William Bisley, who did some impressive modelling on what it would look like if all schools had just 5% of their roof covered in panels.
As well as the significant savings from solar (either for the school or the Ministry of Education, which pays the bills), there’s a big opportunity for big batteries to play a role in the wider energy system. And there’s also an opportunity to influence the next generation by building in an educational component.
At Wakari School in Dunedin, giving the kids a way to learn about sustainability was a big driver for its solar installation and Dunedin Solar came to the party, with staff coming into class to run through all the benefits.
As senior team leader David Waddell wrote:
On June 13th Laura from Dunedin Solar came to visit the Senior Syndicate to give us an update on how the system has been performing since its installation. We gathered together in Rm15 to check out the latest data on our electricity generation and some of the savings that we have been making so far. We are lucky to have a system that is updated in real time. We are able to see exactly what we are using in terms of electricity at anytime of the day! When looking at the graphs on electricity generation we noticed the difference between cloudy days and sunny days. The great news was that even though we were in the middle of winter, when the sun is out we are still generating electricity!
Laura told us that since the system went live we have saved a good amount of money. The online app tells us that we have almost earned $2000 so far! We have also saved the equivalent of over 22,000km of CO2 that would have come from car travel. That is definitely reducing our carbon footprint!
After the presentation, Lachie and Lyra were interviewed by Dunedin Solar to share their thoughts on why solar was great for our school. They did a fantastic job and shared some really insightful ideas. We are looking forward to seeing the final video of this. Let's keep the sun shining!
Kudos to Lyra because Wattage Cottage is an undeniably good name for a classroom powered by the sun.
Further north at Waiheke High, the year seven social studies class has been getting quizzed on solar as part of its studies into renewable energy. A few years ago Waiheke High Sustainability Students fundraised in the community to install solar and they are now saving $20K per year on their energy bills.
In Canada, one school even turned its solar installation into a song.
A solar SWAT team
Rewiring Aotearoa has long been advocating for more electric farms and many are following Mike Casey’s lead, but there are still plenty of questions and a few unnecessary barriers holding it back.
Following on from the Government’s announcement at Fieldays aimed at growing rural solar and storage, EECA's new solar on farms phoneline is now open for business and there's also an opportunity for farms to get some demonstration funding for solar and battery systems.
Co-funding applications open 18 September and offer up to $200k per farm for systems from 30-500Kw.
Farmers can also get advice on how to progress consents and applications with local and regional regulatory bodies and electricity distribution businesses (EDBs), which is a barrier we often hear about.
Solar and batteries can lower costs, lower emissions and improve resilience. And it's one area where farmers don't have to compromise on anything. The sector is going well at the moment, and there are big payouts on the horizon for many after the sale of Fonterra's consumer brands, so it could be a good time to invest.
Casey recently visited farmers Emma Crutchley and Kyle Hagen in the Maniototo and saw how their sheep are also benefitting from better grass growth under its panels.
And a study in Australia that compared 1700 merino sheep grazing under panels with those out in the open showed some impressive results.
The findings challenge conventional assumptions about livestock welfare in modified environments. Sheep grazing between solar arrays showed no negative health impacts. Instead, researchers documented enhanced wool quality with increased fiber strength and growth rates. The solar infrastructure created microhabitats that benefited both the animals and the underlying vegetation.
Sailing away
Vessev has been turning heads with its beautiful electric hydrofoiling boats in New Zealand and it will soon be turning heads in Northern Ireland as it has just received its first international order for an 11-person VS-9.
“Vessev chief executive Eric Laakmann said an eco tourism resort in Northern Ireland will be the launch customer next year.
The resort called Finn Lough ordered the nine-metre electric catamaran to access remote points of the lake and transfer guests to their accommodation.
With over 30 million boats in the world, almost all of them running on fossil fuels, there should be many more orders where that came from.
Utter rubbish
We love electric rubbish trucks just as much as we love electric boats at Rewiring and we have covered the excellent work of Waste Management New Zealand a fair bit on our channels. Hutt City Council, one of the smarter councils when it comes to electrifying its assets and pushing the benefits of going electric to ratepayers, has been a beneficiary of that innovation and aimed to have a 100% electric rubbish fleet by 2024. But it’s taken things up a notch with the latest addition to its kerbside collection team, decking it out with some eye-catching creative from a recent sustainability campaign.
Councils play an important role when it comes to electrification, as we’ve outlined in our Vote Electric page. Hutt City Council includes an “objective for companies to operate services with electric rubbish trucks and demonstrate how they intend to reduce their emissions during the duration of the contract” in the tender for kerbside services. And that's the kind of good pressure we'd love to see more of.
‘The details matter because the details make the curve, and the curves are destiny’
Most know about the declining costs of solar panels and batteries, but everything else that uses electricity to operate is dropping in price too. That’s what the authors of a 40,000 word epic call the electric slide and China is dominating on this front.
As it says:
That means that China controls the means of producing electric vehicles (EVs), drones, robots, and all of the other electric products that are replacing the combustion-driven machines on which America built its might.
As we speak, everything that moves, heats, lights up, computes, or converts energy is being rebuilt to perform better, faster, cheaper, quieter, and as a freebie, cleaner around electric technology.
Simply put: anything that can go electric will.
Or rather, anything that can go electric economically will.
Every year, the number of things that can economically go electric increases as their components get cheaper and more performant. Every year, China grows its Electric Stack capabilities relative to the West. Taken together, that means that more of the physical cutting edge will be Made in China.
Productivity is all about doing more with less, and electrification offers a massive opportunity to improve that. Well worth a read to see where the future is going.
Shining light into dark places
Despite the obvious benefits of solar, there’s still a fair bit of misinformation (and some disinformation) floating around. Carbon Brief has focused on 16 solar myths and explained why they are just that.
While the opponents can try to talk solar down, here’s the rub: “Global solar capacity is already at least 40-times larger than it was in 2010. The International Energy Agency (IEA) expects it to be the world's largest power source by 2033 ... (Notably, the IEA has consistently underestimated the growth of solar.)”
Here's the list:
As Auckland Council will know, going after golf courses is risky. Those committed golfers will fight hard (and sometimes dirty) to preserve their green space, but this comparison between solar coverage and golf courses in different countries was revealing.
We can keep the golf courses (and more of that productive land) as long as we make better use of our rooftops. And at least most golf courses have electric buggies. Early EV adopters right there.
Nor blimey
Norway gets a lot of credit for its EV adoption rates (New Zealand doesn’t). But it also has a massive fossil fuel industry (New Zealand also doesn’t). That contradiction makes for some good comedy (and plenty of hypocrisy), as the latest clip from The Juice Media shows.
With New Zealand’s ‘clean, green and 100% pure’ rep and a recent lurch backwards towards fossil fuels, we wait patiently for our skewering.
Financial commentator Frances Cook uses her own story to show that that an investment in solar and an EV significantly outperforms the stock market and fellow number cruncher Nadine Higgins says that if you do it right, EVs are cheaper to run and own; EV sales have climbed to their highest level since 2022 and are closing in on 2023's numbers and Go Rentals has just invested $2.3 million in some new Tesla Model Y Premiums; the gap between energy costs of diesel vans and utes and electric vans and utes is absolutely massive; solar is also going off right now, with one installer in Otago 448% above their sales target in March; Lightforce has gone back to the Barretts with a new TV ad; Wellington mayor Andrew Little explains its electrification strategy and Hutt City Council shares data showing how its fleet has gone from dirty Toyotas to cleaner EVs; Shenzen in China has electrified its public transport and taxis and that's come with big benefits - and some challenges; and a very simple illustration of the LNG terminal.
Read moreDownloadAs Minister of energy, climate and local government, Simon Watts had a great opportunity to push the country towards cheaper, cleaner and more reliable New Zealand-made energy. And that’s why we laid down a challenge and gave him the ‘MegaWatts’ moniker last year. Rewiring Aotearoa CEO Mike Casey says he did some good things, like enabling more solar on farms, removing tax on solar exports, fixing onerous solar consenting requirements, putting pressure on the lines companies to pull up their socks, and getting the ball rolling on the Ratepayer Assistance Scheme. "But the LNG import terminal appears to have been a defining issue."
Read moreDownloadAfter ‘crunching the numbers’ and adding in new sources of ‘New Zealand-made energy’ to our equations, CEO Mike Casey has announced that Rewiring Aotearoa will be changing its name to Refuelling Aotearoa. There has been a huge amount of independently verified research showing electrification beats fossil fuels on economics, efficiency, emissions and energy security and that there is a huge opportunity for New Zealand to electrify, but the discovery of an infinite supply of snake oil in New Zealand has changed everything, he says.
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