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There can't be too many off-grid MPs in the world, but Celia Wade-Brown is one of them and she's the latest candidate in our ongoing series Political Power, where we get up close and personal with our elected representatives about their energy use.
Wade-Brown is a List MP for the Greens and lives on a remote farm in the Wairarapa with no power supply to the road or the house, so they started off with solar and batteries and added a small hydro scheme, which is a great combo that makes the winters in the valley more liveable.
They can charge the E-bike and all the electric tools and they also have a New Zealand-designed Tuatara electric side-by-side vehicle, which is great for getting around the rough stuff on the farm and putting out the traps. She even went all the way to Masterton, which is a trip of about 50km.
She hasn't electrified the tractor yet, but that's a higher degree of difficulty and something to put on the list for later.
As Mike Casey says, her farm is almost like a microcosm of New Zealand's energy system. When it's not raining the sun's normally out, and vise versa and, as she says, we have the resources we need - including geothermal and wind - to escape the imported energy trap.
When she was mayor of Wellington she worked on getting solar on schools, which is no-brainer for the taxpayer and the schools, and she says it's also good to see marae being set up with solar and batteries to improve community resilience in the face of increasingly severe weather events.
Wade-Brown will be standing down after this election, but The Greens recently came out with a range of electrification focused policies, including backing the idea of low-interest, long-term loans for electric upgrades. Hydro schemes not included at this stage.
See all the videos in the 'Political Power' series here ⚡https://loom.ly/sDIWbXo
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.
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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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