I'm an electrician in Dunedin and I got solar installed about two years ago. We have our own water and sewerage, so we were looking for power security. But the other reason we were also looking at cost savings and doing the homework we realised that the return on the solar investment was going to be greater than the investment of our money in the bank.

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The solar system has performed very well. In fact, it's exceeded expectations. The Tesla Powerwall I think is the key to the success of the solar install because it's given us freedom to use the power when we we need it and to maximise the three hours of free power between 9pm and midnight. So, looking back, we’re probably only paying for 10% of the power we get from Contact.

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I've really loved the Tesla app, I probably look at it a few times a day. It's helping just to see how well the system is doing. And this helped me make decisions to maximise the benefits as to when we put the dishwasher on, when we have the hot water cylinder on. So that has saved us a lot.

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Our electricity bill used to be about the $200 a month. We're now down to either negative $20 or $30 or the worst bill we've had in June is only $60. So the savings have been substantial. 

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My neighbour was thinking about [solar]. He invited us over and we could go over some figures and from our experience, he was able to see that it was worthwhile. If you're not sure, speak to somebody who's had an install. But yes, I strongly encourage it.

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I have really enjoyed reading about others’ experiences transitioning to fully electric, so I thought I’d share ours.

In 2020 my wife and I built our house on a driveway that was left over between two houses following some redevelopment in Mt Roskill, Auckland. It’s a long narrow house (4m x 20m); small but perfect for the two of us. We thought it best to get solar installed while building as that saves scaffolding costs if the solar panels go up following the roofing. Shopping around we spent just over $10k for a 5kw system with 16 panels from Super City Solar and couldn’t have been happier with their help and customer service.

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Knowing roughly what we might save, and be paid for excess sent back to the grid, we thought it may take 10-15 years to break even.

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It took a couple of goes at finding the right electricity supplier that works well for people with solar. We eventually settled with Octopus who were paying 17c per kWh we feed back to the grid. They also let us withdraw any cash credit collected in our account. In the year and a half we’ve been with Octopus we haven’t paid anything for electricity and also withdrew $500 credit that had accumulated in our account. It legitimately seems too good to be true, and obviously we’ll pay off the system quicker than anticipated.

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Electricity prices are creeping up so that will eat into our credit in the future. All appliances are electric and hot water is just a regular electric hot water cylinder. Heating currently comes from a double burner fireplace that although a renewable fuel source, the pollution output is not great. I collect all the timber from local wind fall so it only costs me the time to cut and split.

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When our budget allows we’ll upgrade to a heat pump for warmth, battery and also heat pump hot water cylinder (and hopefully an EV!). The list is long.

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The system we've now had more than a year so we've been able to see how it's performed and it's more than 10% above what Dunedin Solar estimated it would be on the quote, so that's really pleasing. That equated to a lot of savings and a lot of CO2 savings as well. For the first year it came in at $1,962, which is a 9.1% return on investment. And because the electricity prices keep going up, chances are that return on investment will go up year on year. In fact, next year it will be 9.4% if I generate the same amount of solar, so I'm really happy with that.

I knew it would be good to have solar but I wasn't really prepared for how good it feels. There's something magical about having these black panels on the roof that make electricity. It just seems crazy that I wasn't doing that before. It's like every house should be able to generate some of its power and it's so affordable and it just makes so much sense!

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Auckland company Waterware has been delivering quality in all things plumbing, central heating and cooling and bathroomware since 1989. As technical director Darren Yearsley says: "solar energy for a business application is perfect because we're using the majority of our energy during daylight hours. We're a warehousing operation and have a design studio and we're open from eight to five so it means if you have your system sized correctly then there's no need for storage and we just offset our normal power usage.

We pull from the grid when we need to and we put back into the grid when we have surplus so it means that the capital cost of the system is constrained as much as possible but the value added of the offsetting of our power bill really makes sense.

We were always interested in having a solar system and the barrier was the cost but when Jordan came and showed that it could be done in a cash flow neutral way then it just made total sense. The installation process went very smoothly and the team at Choice Energy did exactly what they said they were going to do and when they said they were going to do it. So yeah it was very very smooth and we're very happy.

We've had a reduction in power bills of 50 to 75 percent depending on the weather. That's fantastic for us and the cash flow projections Choice Energy did for us are working out as as they as expected. No regrets.

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I have been on my electrification journey for only a short while. Our first EV in 2017 was charged out the window from a normal plug on a farm property. Michael Sly has always been an inspiration. I was lucky enough to meet Saul Griffith a few years ago and realised that many of the challenges we have around energy poverty, efficiency and resilience are pretty simply resolved through electrons. I am lucky enough to be in a fully electric and very efficient home with 28 solar panels and a 13.5kWh house batteryThe electricity bill was $150 in April and $450 in May with an EV, and there's no gas or firewood costs. This is a home that has probably been 15 years in the making for me. In the last six years I have at least halved my own carbon impact, meanwhile Ziptrek Ecotours New Zealand will soon mark its fifth year of minimising, calculating and offsetting its own emissions (Ekos). Everyday all of us can do better in work and play.

We’ve got a pretty big house and live in a fairly cold climate and our power bills in the winter were massive. It felt like we were being forced to rent our power from a landlord that seemed likely to just keep putting up the rent, so we decided to invest in solar and own our power instead. 

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We put up 19 panels and added a 15kwh battery and it’s more than halved our bills in winter and we produce far more electricity than we need in summer - and that’s with the addition of an EV. The solar and EV combo feels like a cheat code, like some kind of hack to get around the continually increasing prices of petrol and grid electricity and while there were obviously significant upfront costs involved, it feels like you get to drive and power your house for free. 

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Once you get a power plant on your roof, you start to think about electricity a bit differently and I love trying to optimise the system. As we’re on a time of use plan, we charge the battery through the day with solar and then use it for the nighttime peak and we charge it again at low rates overnight for the morning peak. Even on cloudy days, the solar still often produces enough to keep the house running through the day.

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Just because we live close to New Zealand’s main hydro generation, it doesn’t mean we get a free pass at peak time. We’re all part of the system, so using more electricity when everyone else needs it can lead to the burning of coal and gas up north. It’s nice to know that our battery, our smart charger and the hot water timers we have put in basically remove us from that peak demand. 

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Solar seems to be contagious, too: since we’ve had our panels put on, two of our neighbours have also followed suit. 

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What made you want to install solar panels?

I've always been excited about the way solar panels have developed. The price hadn’t changed much over ten years, but the actual output has increased hugely. Solar panels got to a point where the price and the amount of output made sense. At around the same time we were planning to reroof our house.

So you felt it was time? The technology was right and you were about to invest in home renovations?

Absolutely, yeah. The solar array, the inverter, and the battery cost about $22,000, so it made sense to add this to the amount we were investing in renovations. Comparatively, using solar and switching to an electric car looked like a massive saving in household power and fuel costs.

How long do you reckon it would take to pay off?

It's hard to calculate. Initially our solar installer went “let's have a look at your bills from the last three years, and see what the array will produce”. They came up with a median and recommended it would take about six years. But they didn’t take into account that we’d also have an electric car.

The clean emissions incentive and knowing we’d be charging it with our own solar panels helped us decide to buy an EV. Savings from using the electric car are at least $5000 a year, and that's just on fuel not taking into consideration servicing.

We charge the car directly from the solar on our roof during the day. If we just look at the savings on fuel, then we’ll probably pay off the solar panels in three years. We would have needed to replace our car anyway so, with the incentive, the cost between a conventional and an electric vehicle was comparable.

How does it feel to be generating your own power?

Well, it feels good in two ways.

There's obviously the financial return. Admittedly we'd recently moved into this house and our previous home was very big, so we couldn't really get an accurate gauge of how big our electricity bills would be. But, during the summer our power bills are really quite small, and not nearly as much during winter

The biggest thing is being more energy independent; having an electric car and saving on fuel, having solar for the house and saving on power bills, and knowing that we’re using a resource much more efficiently for ourselves and the planet just feels better.

I like the idea of having an interconnected smart neighbourhood, which you could totally do where we live because there are other people with EVs and you could connect up the solar panels so all the EV batteries can store and use electricity, that's where this technology is going, right? That's the future.

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We just electrified a 1975 Mazda Bongo by replacing its engine and fuel tank with batteries, inverter motor etc from a 2012 Nissan Leaf. Rippletech is producing controllers designed for just his kind of project. They have already been used to control Nissan Leaf motors in a six-seater Yamaha buggy, a 1974 electric coffee roaster (most roasters are gas) and a hybrid pontoon boat. You can read more about the Mazda Bongo conversion here.

What would be very cool to see is parts from wrecked or end of life electric cars - both battery and inverter - used for photovoltaic installations. There are some one-off installations but a commercial offering would be a great combination of resources: sun, cars, brains. Thanks for all your efforts.

We like in Taranaki and have an 18 panel, 5Kw solar system, an EV and two e-bikes. We just got out of gas inside by changing to induction hobs and electric rather than gas hot water. The house is now fossil fuel free! I am a climate nutter and loathe Gentailers who are price gouging the population. I have said for years 'what do farmers have lots of? Roofs' The problem is the politicians and their rich mates who have no incentive to change. Congratulations, go to it!"

Read about her electrification journey here.

I’ve just completed your survey after reading an article in our local Stewart Island News.

Our home came off grid on 9^th November 2021 and I’ve occasionally blogged about our progress, what we’ve learned and how our thinking has changed.  

Probably the most important snippet is the return on investment of slightly better than 18% (this is with depreciation, as we run a Bed & Breakfast).

We have cut our diesel central heating usage to 20% of pre solar, and this is factored into the financials.

By the end of June we will have retired our elderly diesel SUV and replaced it with a 40Kw Nissan Leaf, which will be set up as vehicle-to-home [a technology that lets electric vehicles transfer energy to homes for backup power] and we hope this will remove any dependence on our diesel gen set.

Our figures speak for themselves. Solar does work, even this far south in Rakiura Stewart Island. And it isn’t rocket science. The issues of micro grids are well understood worldwide, and the kit is there to make it work. If we can make to work at 46deg 50 minutes south, then it's do-able over most, if not all of New Zealand.

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Your report will be very useful in helping consumers understand how they can financially benefit from investing in the transition to Green Energy.

You may be interested that a couple of years ago (when I was 80) I had a 7KWH solar system installed at my home and then installed a Tesla battery last year. I have fuelled my house and Tesla EV which is getting to almost 20,000kms for nothing other than the capital cost ($40K not including the EV) and currently have a $620 credit at Octopus my supplier. If I took that credit in cash it would more than pay for my Tesla fuelling away from home.

The EV is largely charged using a Tesla App – “charge on Solar only” a very useful load shifting mechanism which gives a significantly better result than charging at off peak rates. I charge my Hot Water using a timer for around peak production - mid-day and sometimes when very cloudy I simply press a button to turn it off - again load shifting.

I am moving to a retirement village shortly and have a larger 10KWH system and Tesla battery underway there. My thinking is to future proof myself against the inevitable rise in Electricity prices. The buyer of my current home certainly paid a premium because of my solar – so that actually cost me nothing and easily provided the funding for the new installation. Looked at another way I am also just over two years towards my seven year payback. It's never too late to start.

It does seem to me that Government could usefully finance younger people into solar in much the same way that  many years ago State Advances helped my wife and I with our first home and in the process save some of the inevitable costs to the Nation of rising grid demand. In reality a loan and a win-win for user and  nation. Seven year finance would work using the savings for repayment.

Some modelling around the size of the fund necessary to achieve this using a range of annual installation numbers would clearly be useful to Government. State housing could also look at solar - charge somewhat higher rents and reduce/remove tenant power costs.

This would also appeal to those (like me) concerned about global warming.

Watch Mike speak to Newshub's Isobel Ewing about ensuring energy security at the two-minute mark here

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Respond Architects Associate Architect Joe Lyth has spent the past few years building his own Passive House Certified and Homestar v5 10* home and using it as a vehicle to educate the industry, explore new approaches, and evaluate whether it is possible to achieve an affordable, healthy, high performance home on a budget. His most recent project has been the addition of solar panels to his home, with a journey and outcomes that can help other projects.

We’re moving into winter and have had some cloudy and rainy days, but the system has still generated over 600kWh of power, nearly 35% more than we have used. Our first bill was only $33.67 for the entire month, and while this will increase in winter, the additional generation we will get in summer should more than cover this, meaning our power bills for the whole year should be close to $0. Without the solar our bills would have come to around $1780/ year, that means the original investment will be paid off in 7-8 years, less if we end up making a profit on what we sell back.

Read the full story here and watch a video of the build here.

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After reading the book Electrify I decided to get an EV. One of my better decisions. Bye bye pollution, noise, petrol stations, mechanics, petro states… No turning back. Just sorry there is no way for renters to instal solar panels.

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