Everybody loves the sunshine

We’ve seen a few stories recently about our gas reserves declining. 

It’s happening faster than expected; it’s getting harder to find in New Zealand; and it’s bloody expensive - both if you’re using it at home and for generating electricity. 

So what’s the solution? Let’s follow the lines. 

California has found one. 

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Australia figured it out a couple of years ago. 

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Everybody loves the sunshine in Germany - even though it’s not particularly sunny there.

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Old Brighty took top spot in the EU for the first time ever this month. 

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And China is going like the clappers. 

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This solar revolution is happening at both a small scale on rooftops and balconies and on a large scale at solar farms. And that’s helping to reduce the reliance on electricity generated by gas and other fossil fuels, especially coal.

So why is New Zealand so slow on the uptake? 

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We have an amazing opportunity here. Unlike Australia, New Zealand has a huge battery in the form of our hydro lakes and we could keep them topped up during winter or dry years by increasing the use of solar. Instead, we continue to rely on expensive fossil fuels to firm the system when our lakes get low. 

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We will need approximately double the amount of electricity we’re currently generating to electrify everything, including our fossil fuel hot water systems, cars, heaters and cooktops. And more solar - ideally on rooftops because it’s the cheapest electricity available to New Zealand households, farms and businesses and potentially with batteries to smooth out the peaks - is the logical step. 

We will still need some gas in the short term for generation and to keep certain industries running, but we need a plan to move away from it. 

A proposed new fossil fuel plant at Huntly and big grid scale batteries will only benefit the gentailers and keep the prices high for customers, while rooftop solar is proven to reduce energy costs for those who have it and can help bring down prices for everyone else, too. 

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It’s been pleasing to see some momentum recently with the Government making a number of solar announcements. But we are a long way behind. 

We need much stronger incentives and we need an energy strategy that is actually strategic, rather than ‘fuel agnostic’. Continuing to rely on gas ignores economics. It ignores emissions. And it ignores what’s happening in many other places around the world. 

We talk about gas reserves in terms of years. The sun has over a billion years left in it! And it won’t raise its prices. 

Home is where the savings are

A new study by the Institute of Energy Economics and Financial Analysis in Australia has found “that household energy upgrades could slash residential energy bills across Australia by 80 to 90% for a typical household”.

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The report’s title says it all, really: A focus on homes, not power plants, could halve energy bills.

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“Rapid take-up of solar has driven daytime wholesale electricity costs to record lows, but a combination of rising fossil fuel prices, high network costs and an ageing generation fleet means Australian households continue to see rising energy bills,” says author Jay Gordon, Energy Finance Analyst, Australian Electricity. “The response has been dominated by short-term fixes, such as one-off power bill subsidies, or even debates over slowing the rollout of large-scale renewables, in favour of alternatives that would actually increase power prices. These debates ignore the fact that our energy bills are not just a product of the price of energy, but also the amount of energy we are purchasing. And reducing the energy households consume from the grid – while using it more smartly – is one of the most effective ways to reduce energy costs.” \

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Sound familiar? Upfront costs are obviously a barrier and the savings can pay those costs off, but news in New Zealand about more councils supporting the idea of low-interest long-term loans that are tied to a property will certainly help address that issue here. 

Time to charge

We love an infrastructure timelapse video and we particularly enjoyed this one of 24 new bus charging stations going in on the North Shore in just one day. 

Built by Kiwi company Kwetta and installed by Electronet, the Hillside Road depot for Ritchies will initially run 23 electric buses. The company is set to bring 175 more electric buses into Auckland’s network after signing a deal earlier this year. 

The number of electric buses in Auckland is expected to rise to around 450 by August 2026, which is around a third of the 1350 buses that operate AT’s services.

The first electric double decker hit the streets last year.

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Beam me up

What if we didn’t need poles and wires? DARPA recently sent 800 watts of energy over 8km in 30 seconds using a laser (in case you were wondering, it wasn’t wasted: they made some popcorn with it). 

Energy is an essential requirement in the military and the Persistent Optical Wireless Energy Relay (POWER) programme is trying to take powerlines (and possibly fossil fuels) out of the equation. Nikola Tesla experimented unsuccessfully in this area but the science is progressing now (Kiwi company Emrod is also working on this problem).

While there are plenty of sceptics who don’t think this will be possible, it's important to remember all the things that were deemed impossible before they eventually happened.

The Japanese government hopes to assemble a space-based solar array by 2040 and beam the power down to earth, while some in the aviation sector believe something similar could be done with planes, where energy could be beamed to them as they flew.

Star gazing 2.0

We know those with solar love looking at their app (and they often love showing other people, whether or not they're interested). Ian Griffin, who recently had solar installed on his property near Middlemarch, is an astronomer at the Otago Museum and he’s also discovered that the app is quite addictive.

As he explained in his regular Otago Daily Times column: 

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So what does an astronomer do when the skies are cloudy, and the moon is full? Well, I've found a new way to watch the sky and it's not what you might expect. Last week, with the help of some competent electricians and a lot of careful reading of instruction manuals, I installed 28 solar panels at our place in Middlemarch. The primary goal, of course, was to generate electricity and reduce dependence on the grid. But in the process, I discovered a new and somewhat compulsive form of skywatching. You see, the solar panels come with an app. And this app - a marvel of the modern age - shows me how much electricity I'm generating. At 9am on a sunny winter day, the panels might produce a piffling 30w. But by 12.30pm, when the sun is at its highest, they're cranking out over 4000w, all quietly stored away for future use in a sleek battery in the shed. Anyway, the app has become my new form of solar observation. Who needs sunspots when you can chart kilowatt-hours with obsessive glee?

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