The case for energy loans: read our latest explainer
Andrea Vance digs into the big infrastructure deficit faced by Queenstown as it deals with rapid growth - and Rewiring Aotearoa's Josh Ellison explains how the ambitious Queenstown Electrification Accelerator will help address the region's energy concerns and turn it into the world's most electric destination.
As she wrote:
The Queenstown Electrification Accelerator, an ambitious plan for the town to become the world’s most electrified destination launched last month. The pilot will build a low-cost, low-emissions, resilient energy system, combining local rooftop generation with traditional grid power.
“If we could have an infrastructure environment where households and farms and businesses were treated as an equal part of the energy system, we’d be able to deploy a lot more solar and batteries a lot faster,” says Josh Ellison of Rewiring Aotearoa.
“Historically, electricity infrastructure has been large-scale... But now, a combination of large-scale and small-scale operating together in the system is what’s going to work.”
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.
Read moreDownloadWhen 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.
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