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Rewiring Aotearoa CEO Mike Casey is intereviewed by Checkpoint's Lisa Owen about the SolarZero saga and says solar remains the future, but owning your panels rather than renting them is the way to deliver the biggest savings.
Casey told Checkpoint the technology itself is "100 percent the future" and was the cheapest energy available to New Zealand households.
Business models "come and go" and it was about getting the most affordable energy in human history to Kiwi households.
Casey said SolarZero "put solar on the map" and accelerated installations in New Zealand, but a changing market and a decrease in prices meant its business model did not have a long-term future.
These days, Casey said it was cheaper for households to own the panels and batteries, financing them on their mortgages rather than leasing them.
But New Zealand was still far behind Australia in the update of solar panels.
Where 35 percent of households in Australia had rooftop solar panels, just 3 percent of Kiwi homes had them.
The average install in New Zealand was about five kilowatts, costing $10,000.
In Australia, the average was 10kW, and about $20,000.
Casey said New Zealand needed to fix the rules and regulations to inherit the "well oiled machine" that was the Australian solar industry.
It was "unfortunate" the customer had lost the option of SolarZero but the right business model "will prevail in this country".
Financial commentator Frances Cook uses her own story to show that that an investment in solar and an EV significantly outperforms the stock market and fellow number cruncher Nadine Higgins says that if you do it right, EVs are cheaper to run and own; EV sales have climbed to their highest level since 2022 and are closing in on 2023's numbers and Go Rentals has just invested $2.3 million in some new Tesla Model Y Premiums; the gap between energy costs of diesel vans and utes and electric vans and utes is absolutely massive; solar is also going off right now, with one installer in Otago 448% above their sales target in March; Lightforce has gone back to the Barretts with a new TV ad; Wellington mayor Andrew Little explains its electrification strategy and Hutt City Council shares data showing how its fleet has gone from dirty Toyotas to cleaner EVs; Shenzen in China has electrified its public transport and taxis and that's come with big benefits - and some challenges; and a very simple illustration of the LNG terminal.
Read moreDownloadAs Minister of energy, climate and local government, Simon Watts had a great opportunity to push the country towards cheaper, cleaner and more reliable New Zealand-made energy. And that’s why we laid down a challenge and gave him the ‘MegaWatts’ moniker last year. Rewiring Aotearoa CEO Mike Casey says he did some good things, like enabling more solar on farms, removing tax on solar exports, fixing onerous solar consenting requirements, putting pressure on the lines companies to pull up their socks, and getting the ball rolling on the Ratepayer Assistance Scheme. "But the LNG import terminal appears to have been a defining issue."
Read moreDownloadAfter ‘crunching the numbers’ and adding in new sources of ‘New Zealand-made energy’ to our equations, CEO Mike Casey has announced that Rewiring Aotearoa will be changing its name to Refuelling Aotearoa. There has been a huge amount of independently verified research showing electrification beats fossil fuels on economics, efficiency, emissions and energy security and that there is a huge opportunity for New Zealand to electrify, but the discovery of an infinite supply of snake oil in New Zealand has changed everything, he says.
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