Read our new Electric Homes and Vehicles report
We've been talking about energy for ages at Rewiring, but everyone else seems to be talking about it, too, primarily because price rises are proving to so painful for so many homes and businesses. One way to reduce that pain is by offering long-term, low-interest loans for electric upgrades, something we've been working hard on for a while, and that was the subject of a front page story on The Post. In it, questions were raised about the amount of money being spent on consultants (and some of the advice then being ignored) and whether the Government would back the Ratepayer Assistance Scheme.
Rewiring Aotearoa CEO Mike Casey featured prominently with the quote: "It's just time to stop spending money on consulting to come up with new ideas ... we really need to start taking action."
Read the full story here (paywalled)⚡
Right now, an average home could save about $1,000 a year, including paying interest on a loan. And there are a lot of other 'positive externalities', as the economists say.
We don't need subsidies to make solar economic, but where subsidies will help is if we want to speed things up, like they've done in Australia. Subsidies will encourage people with money or access to finance to go out and buy solar and batteries, but long-term, low-interest finance is more important because it means more New Zealand households, especially lower-income homes, will be able to access those technologies and save money from day one.
Find out more about the RAS and why it makes so much sense here.
When Mike Casey bought his house near Cromwell, it came with gas bottles on the side of the home for water and an expensive diesel system for the underfloor heating. He replaced both of them with a Steibel Eltron system and it's been saving him money ever since. As technical manager Bhawesh Singh told him at the Electrify Queenstown conference, there has been a big influx in enquiries from homes looking to get off the molecules and onto electrons.
Read moreDownloadConfidence that cutting regulations to make solar power more accessible - won't jeopardise people's safety. A new Regulation Ministry reports laid out a potential blueprint to legalise plug-in solar and reduce the time and cost of panel installation. Rewiring Aotearoa CEO Mike Casey shares his thoughts with Andrew Dickens.
The burgeoning demand for solar was also a chance to address a mismatch between the numbers of training opportunities available and young people searching for work, Casey said. "The mums of New Zealand are telling me that there's not enough apprenticeships for their kids and the solar installers of New Zealand are telling me there's not enough trained people."
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