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It's pretty rare for someone to be invited back to the E Tipu Agri Summit two years in a row, but Mike Casey has plenty to talk about. Rewiring Aotearoa's Electric Farms paper proved there are similar benefits for the rural sector if we can turn farms into power plants and, as he says - and as he has shown on his own cherry orchard - New Zealand’s farmers could reduce their operational costs by going electric and generating a lot of their own electricity through mid-scale solar and battery systems. And they can also make money by feeding electricity back into the grid at times of high demand. “Whether in the home or on the farm, electrification is a real win-win. It’s not just the right environmental decision anymore, it’s the right economic decision. It’s a no-brainer. We just have to figure out how to make it easy.”
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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