More News

Qiulae Wong recently became leader of The Opportunity Party and, as she tells Mike Casey in the second episode of our new series Political Power, she has been on the electric bandwagon for a while now.

In the last Electric Avenue of 2025, we look at the two biggest trends in the world of energy; the Government goes electric for its fancy fleet upgrade; Nick Offerman offers his services to a US campaign extolling the virtues of EVs; Australia shows what's possible in new homes when you add solar, batteries and smart tech; a start-up selling portable solar and battery systems that wants it to be as easy and common as wi-fi; and The Lines Company looks to put some solar on the roof of the Ōtorohanga Kiwi House.

When it comes to electric farming, "the numbers are becoming undeniable," says Nicholson Poultry's Jeff Collings. With 60kW of solar, a Nissan Leaf as a 'farm quad', electric mowers, an electric ute that can run a water blaster, and even a chicken manure scraper made out of a wrecked Tesla that, as Rewiring's Matt Newman says, looks a bit like something out of Mad Max, "almost everything is electric". There aren't many others in New Zealand who have gone this far down the electric road. And, with his electric Stark Varg, the fastest off-road motorbike in the world, he's obviously having plenty of fun on that road, too.