The case for energy loans: read our latest explainer
On this week's electrification highlight reel, Contact Energy's new grid-scale battery project with Tesla, how the really big machine manufacturers are going electric, solar power reaches a big audience - and a big milestone - and a succinct summary of the efficiency of electric machines.
Store it and they will come
Electricity: it’s not how we’re using it, it’s when we’re using it. While New Zealand’s electricity system is highly renewable, we often need to burn coal and fire up the gas (or occasionally even ask everyone nicely not to use as much) just to get through the peak times. And that’s where batteries can play a role, whether distributed across lots of homes or at massive scale, so it’s exciting to hear the news that Contact has announced a $165 million battery project with Tesla next to the Glenbrook Steel Mill.
We need more renewable generation to power all our new electric machines and projects like this help make the most of intermittent renewable resources like solar and wind so we can use it when we really need it. This will hopefully reduce and eventually remove the need to burn fossil fuels for electricity generation. Recent experience in California, which has invested heavily in grid scale batteries, shows how they can help to smooth the peaks.
But whether it helps reduce electricity costs for New Zealanders is another matter. It pays to remember Rewiring Aotearoa’s research that shows rooftop solar is by far the cheapest form of delivered electricity you can get because it doesn’t need to be transported. The price of household batteries also continues to drop and, as EV technology develops that allows you to use stored energy for things other than driving, you can basically buy a huge battery and get a free car.
Think big
A decade or so ago, electric vehicles were a rarity on the road. Now they’re everywhere.
An electric bus was also something of a novelty a few years back, but Palmerston North now has more than 40 of them (and Islamabad just ordered another 160).
Some believed larger vehicles like buses and trucks would be reliant on hydrogen as batteries wouldn’t be big enough to cope. That may still be the case with some areas like aviation or shipping but they’ve basically been proven wrong on the roads as battery electric options have proliferated.
So what about the really big machines? Turns out the same trend appears to happening in this space, too.
This week The Washington Post wrote about those developments and the writer got to drive an EV that weighed 25,000kgs and dug giant holes.
“Off-road equipment, including excavators, bulldozers, cranes and tractors, creates about 3 percent of U.S. carbon emissions — roughly the same as the airline industry. Making these machines carbon-free would be almost as big a step toward halting climate change as taking all commercial planes out of the sky.”
Unlike cars, these machines don’t just need to move, they also need to do work, so it’s a harder challenge to solve, but “electric machines are slowly starting to show up at farms and construction sites”.
“John Deere plans to sell more than 20 models of electric and hybrid construction equipment and tractors by 2026. Construction giants Caterpillar and Komatsu are developing electric excavators and wheel loaders. Volvo Construction Equipment, which made the excavator I was driving, sells seven electric models.”
Macraes Mine claims to have New Zealand's largest electric vehicle, and while most EVs are (thankfully) cordless, this one is plugged in, which removes the need for it to stop and charge.
On the farm, the Linttas Electric Company’s new semi-autonomous combine harvester was featured in The Guardian Australia as one of the upcoming innovations helping grain farmers shift away from diesel.
Everybody loves the sunshine
The Economist dedicated last week's coverstory (paywall) to solar power and the large feature explored "why the exponential growth of solar power will change the world".
Humans aren’t particularly good at predictions, and one of the graphs in the story shows that very clearly.
Due to rapid cost reductions through economies of scale, the uptake of solar has far exceeded expectations. Those costs are continuing to drop and demand is rapidly increasing.
The same week this feature was released, around one fifth of all the planet’s electricity was generated by solar for one hour on June 21, up from 16% last year.
No sacrifice
In the Guardian story above, Prof. Ray Willis, managing director of Future Smart Strategies, says shifting to electric farm machinery is not just about cost savings and emissions reductions, it's also about redesigning the vehicle for the first time in 100 years.
“If you make it electric, inevitably it turns out to be better, more durable, more reliable.” Most EV owners would agree that is the case.
And the webcomic XKCD illustrates this is in typically humorous fashion.
RNZ'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.
"My message is to not wait it out – instead, grab the opportunity to get ahead. In the long term, unless we hit another Maui, which is unlikely and would take decades to bring online, the era of cheap, abundant gas is over. Business leaders need to start planning now." That's EECA's chief executive Marcos Pelenur writing in the Herald about businesses struggling with rising gas prices and faster than expected declines in gas reserves.
Read moreDownloadTalk about driving change!ETrucks' Ross Linton is at the forefront of New Zealand's nascent electric trucking scene and can claim responsibility for a number of firsts, from the country's first electric concrete truck to the country's first battery swap set up. Since he brought his first electric truck in to the country back in 2018, the technology has advanced massively and driving on electrons has become quite a bit cheaper than diesel and, not surprisingly, that's inspiring a great deal of interest among businesses.
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