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"When you look at how much people are paying now, and the fact grid electricity keeps going up, it’s very hard to argue a solar installation isn’t economic.”
Rewiring Aotearoa's CEO Mike Casey talks to The Press' Blayne Slabbert about the benefits, costs and considerations of getting solar and it's a thorough rundown for anyone thinking about investing.
As he says, a typical household should expect to pay about $2000 per kilowatt for a fully installed solar system, including GST.
“The average system size in New Zealand has been around six or seven kilowatts,” he said.
Zac Le Heux, co-founder of Garden City Solar, says his "rough payback guide is six to eight years for solar only, assuming the family can use a good chunk of the solar power in the middle of the day.
“If you add a battery you’re more in that 10 to 12 year range,” he said.
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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