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Newsroom's Marc Daalder talks to Rewiring research lead Josh Ellison about our growing solar uptake and the reasons for regional variations. As he writes: "One in 27 homes now has rooftop solar, with more than 73,000 registered systems in the latest data from the Electricity Authority, which runs to the end of 2025. That represents a 15 percent increase from 2024 and follows declining solar install prices."
Ellison says affluence was one of the key drivers in solar uptake.
“That highlights the gap between how solar should be rolling out and how it is currently rolling out, which is that people who need the solar savings most are the people who don’t have the spare income to spend $20,000 on solar panels up front,” he said.
“Someone spending $20,000 on solar panels up front might save $60,000 over the life of those panels. Generally speaking, with all costs included – including finance – the savings are about $1000 a year for an average home across the country. People who need the $1000 a year of savings the most are lower-income homes, but ultimately it’s harder for them to make the upfront purchase.”
If the energy system optimised for lower household bills for consumers, the market would be incentivising home solar and batteries. Instead, the market is focused on wholesale power prices and profits for the gentailers, he said.
“If that was the optimisation that NZ Inc was going for, our energy companies would be installing solar and batteries en masse across households, but our regulatory system design creates a different incentive to that, which is why that’s not happening. And of course, it is also contributing to how much bills are rising.”
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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