EV Salary Boost: it's a pay rise you can drive!
The savings from solar are very compelling on their own, but there are many who don’t want to invest because they may not be planning to stay in the home for very long. It’s a reasonable concern given the average time spent in a house is now just over five years. But a new paper shows that solar can be a good investment when it comes to house prices.
We have heard plenty of anecdotal evidence that solar has this effect, but the paper by Chad Harland and Yvonne Matthews called Power in the Pitch has put a number on it.
“Results show that solar homes are marketed through lifestyle, rural and quality cues rather than explicit sustainability framing, suggesting that PV is bundled with broader amenity signals rather than positioned as a distinct attribute. PV-equipped homes command an average sale price premium of 1.34%, with no significant difference in days on market. Effects do not vary with solar irradiance or local solar penetration, indicating limited salience of site-specific energy benefits in buyer decision-making.”
As Kristy Hoare from MySolarQuotes wrote:
“On a $900,000 home that’s over $12,000 - approximately the initial cost of a 6kW system. And that’s before you factor in the power savings while you’re living there. This matters for the solar industry because we hear this all the time: 'I’m not planning to stay here long-term, so what’s the point of going solar?' If solar is a capital improvement, not just a bill saver, that objection starts to fall apart.”
Along with taxes, education and health, energy is proving to be a big talking point in the run up to the election .. which is now 33 days away. All the political parties have released some energy policies .. and while they're quite varied in their approaches .. the main focus seems to be bringing down the cost of electricity for us consumers. Our first guest would like electric transport to also be part of the conversation .. he's calling for a 'great EV comeback' and has some ideas about how to make it happen. Mike Casey, Rewiring Aotearoa Chief Executive joins Jesse.
The electric election continues apace! National announced its 'Electrify NZ 2.0 plan' last week and Mike Casey joined Andrew Dickens on Newstalk ZB to talk about the potential for peer-to-peer trading of energy, the roll of solar in lowering power prices, data centres needing to bring their own generation, and the likelihood that all this talk will turn into action.
