The Labour Party is promising up to $4000 per household to encourage the use of solar energy.
Half of that would be to help pay for solar panels on rooftops and half would be available to pay for battery storage.
The party says the aim would be to boost the amount of sustainable electricity in use across New Zealand.
“We need to increase renewable electricity generation by 68% by 2050," says Labour leader Chris Hipkins.
"Solar on roofs lowers electricity bills, as well as generating electricity locally, reducing reliance on the grid,” Hipkins says.
“I am absolutely focused on lowering household costs at the same time as driving New Zealand to become a global powerhouse of renewable energy. This plan does both of those things.”
Labour's plan is worth less than an equivalent offer from the Green Party, which has a figure of $6000 and can be topped up with interest free loans of up $30,000.
Both parties are pledging similar initiatives for Kaianga Ora, and small-scale community projects also get a mention.
The cost faced by customers in installing solar panels is far greater than either party is offering. One company quotes $10,000 to $15,000 depending on the amount of electricity that is used.
The Sustainable Energy Association of New Zealand (SEANZ) says solar panels alone can cost upwards of $5000 to install but having a battery storage system attached to it can double the price.
SEANZ adds the Labour offer is a good one but it could go further.
It says there are just over 53,000 homes in New Zealand with solar panels on their roofs and the number is growing. But it's still a small percentage of the total number of homes, which was 1.8 million in the 2018 census.
But SEANZ says people are gradually realising that the return on the upfront cost of installing solar panels is worth it in the long run.
Meanwhile Labour and the Greens' support for grants for households is not matched by the National Party, although it too wants more renewable electricity projects including solar and will change planning laws to make this more likely.
The ACT Party does not mention solar in its energy policy document, but like National, it wants simplified approvals for renewable energy schemes such as offshore wind.
Most of New Zealand First's energy policy is devoted to fuel security.
Te Pati Maori wants to establish a $1 billion fund for Māori-owned community energy projects and solar panel and insulation instillations on marae, kura, homes and papakāinga housing developments.
98 Comments
The EV subsidy actually reduced the price of many EVs as companies reduced their retail prices to squeeze under the $80k max.
We might see increases in solar supply and install prices until the market catches up and then any effect will subside. That's what happened in Aus.
There was also some slight of hand. I monitored Nissan EVs before and after subsidy. Before subsidy there were two EV models. One more expensive than the other and after a month of the subsidy there was only one model and it was the higher of the two previous prices from before the subsidy. The model appeared to be the lower from before the subsidy. If I recall there was a model name change as well which confused the matter. I had the distinct impression that only some of the subsidy was passed on.
This is really the key point - this kind of policy just shuffles around our emissions spending within the budget. I could possibly forgive some subsidies on things with positive externalities, like e-bikes, but in general the only policy response needed to reduce our emissions is to reduce the cap and let the country figure it out.
Law of unintended consequences as kiwi says on the market price .
Similar to the effect on house prices that will happen when we tax 'wealthy foreigners'...the rest of the market will adjust to the fact that some one is willing to pay 15% premium for their property...and when said 'wealthy foreigner' sells his house ,he will add the 15% to his asking price to recoup his 'tax'...in the end, it's just another hard working kiwi squeezed middle family that will actually pay...and many more houses will enter the "$2 million luxury house bracket' ...or as we like to say in Auckland,an average 3 bedroom home...
Um no. We really, really need to decrease our emissions and solar all over our rooves will help us do that because they serve to keep water in the lakes. That's good, for dry year risk or during dry years (which are probably sunny as well and often occurs over summer).
The Clean Car Discount, introduced in 2021, offers a rebate on the sticker price of fully electric and plug-in hybrid cars. With fees applied to higher-emitting vehicles, the scheme was intended to be cost-neutral. However, the higher uptake of cleaner vehicles since the launch meant the discounts exceeded the fees by roughly $200m.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/climate-news/300954785/climate-poli…
Yeah its good eventually but that's at least 7 to 8 years not selling the house and moving on. Realistically you need to then be in the same house for 10 to 15 years, which in New Zealand seldom happens. $20K plus up front investment that could be invested elsewhere getting a return. Payback is still pretty marginal if a grid connection is easy, stuck on an island with no power, sure solar is the way to go. Maybe a big family the payback is faster, one or two person household its not worth it.
Likewise late 2021 into our dream home. Just replaced the roof clad. Solar is the next job after the kitchen.
WFH 4 days per week, use roughly 10 kwh per day during work hours.
Also thinking long term about expenses. Retiring with solar and batteries would knock out a huge expense, particularly with time value of money.
If you are connected to the grid, don't waste your money on batteries. It's cheaper to pull power out of the grid at night. Also I am not a fan of roof mount solar unless you don't have a suitable ground mount location. Your roof needs rain to wash it, especially if you are coastal, which is why your iron roof warranty disappears the moment your cover it in panels. Plus panel cleaning and maintenance is much easier at ground level.
All true however things are still evolving. I notice that some panels down here are going onto roofs that don't even face North, I guess with the price of panels getting lower and lower you just put up more panels. Ground mounting is the best, you can optimise the direction and the angle but that just not an option on your average size section. The best idea is to use your EV battery, who knows one day you may have a hot swap system with one battery in your car and the other on charge. The problem is its all about cost.
Plenty of people using V2H
Let's say the 100KWh car battery costs 20K USD = 34K NZD and let's be really generous and say that the battery will last 15 thousand charge cycles, then even if your electricity was "free" it would still cost 34k/15k = 2.26 NZD per cycle which for a 100 kWh battery equates to 2.2c/kWh. Of course, if you're deep cycling your lithium-ion then it might only last 2000 cycles (or less) before dying, in which case your "free" power costs at least 17c/kWh.
it was directed at Palmtree's comment. What's nonsense about it? I should also mention that you can't, or shouldn't slow charge lithium ions for example with solar. The reason being that battery wearing is more related to charge time rather than charge current. Damage to the SEI (solid electrolyte interface) and electrolyte decomposition is a function of the total charge time, with charge current being less important. Counterintuitively, you should get more cycles out of your lithium-ions if you fast charge them within temperature parameters. At least that's my understanding which may be outdated now. It's just a reason why charging your large lithium-ion car battery with solar might not be a great idea.
Huttman - do dams? Sub-stations?
I have never had to replace a PV panel, ever - and I bought my first one in 1980. They lose a few % over a lot of years, but still work. Controllers have never died on me either (I run 4; one on the boat, one in the workshop, 2 to the house). I've used 2nd-hand L/A batteries - usually gel deep-cycle - all the way; a couple have lost a cell and had to be chucked, but they go on and on well past the time they fail a load-test. They just have less capacity.
I used to run a generator -about $1 in petrol per day back in 2005 - but only use it to start my sawbench now, it goes for months unused.
My micro-hydro (Gentle Annie and pelton-wheel) has had two motors in 15 years, rusty bottom bearing in both instances, and I've solved that now...
All my work on that, will never equate to the work-hours grid-dependent folk need to devote to paying power-bills.
"It has long been known some “AAA” backsheet films – made of triple-layer polyamide and widely deployed from 2010 to 2013 – can become brittle and tear. “By now, you would have to see the signs in all modules affected by this, whether they are installed in ground-mounted systems or on roofs,” says Bernhard Weinreich, managing director of HaWe Engineering. Now, younger modules and other foil types are exhibiting similar behavior.
Some 15% of Germany’s solar capacity – 10 GW – could be affected. That equates to up to €2 billion ($2.18 billion) in replacement costs, with only a fraction of the affected panels likely detected thus far."
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2023/09/09/weekend-read-a-10-gw-time-bomb/
Of if you work from home 1-2 days a week and its sunny.
The thing is, if you are thinking about it from an emissions perspective, the solar panel is still charging your car if you charge it outside your house while its sunny. Cos during the day the solar power coming from your roof is essentially piped into the same grid you are using.
system is working well then.
depending on the type of clouds , you can still get quite good production on seemingly cloudy days. There is what is known as the edge of cloud effect , as the sun comes out from behind a cloud , some is reflected back on the panels, and you can get quite a spike in power. Depending on the size of the inverter vs the size of the panels you may not see it , as the inverter will throttle it back to its limit.
TPM are all over it though. Their policy is to take 1 billion dollars effectively for themselves. They have support that numbers about the size of a small suburb, and yet they want 1 billion dollars to make some Maori-owned companies paid for by the tax-payer. Extraordinary. Luckily they will never get to make any actual decisions.
Te Pati Maori wants to establish a $1 billion fund for Māori-owned community energy projects and solar panel and insulation instillations on marae, kura, homes and papakāinga housing developments.
What a joke.
PS: Labour.... solar costs a lot more than what you are stating for a solar system AND battery with decent storage. A decent battery is going to cost between 6 to 10K, just for the battery, then and the necessary solar equipment on top. Retrospective also costs a lot more than fitting in a new build, so your 10-15k actually provides a low end solar system, without a battery in a new build. Very misleading. I would say stick to GST off fruit and veges, it is the same concept and will save no money, but at least you almost understand it.
If you can do it for zero interest, what is the point of the subsidy, it's only 4000 bucks, half of which needs to go to the battery, which will cost you up to 20K (it's about 7K per 6KW battery) extra.
Solar takes a long time to pay off. I have it, payback is an easy 5 to 15 years depending on your power usage, access to sunlight hours etc. Mine has generated about 40,000KwH since 2017, so, that sounds like a lot. But the reality is that unless you have a battery (that increases the cost massively) then the payoff is never what they say, as unless you have all appliances etc timed to operate during sunlight hours and you use all of your generation then your payback needs to be calculated using a large percentage of your generation at 10c per Kwh, not 35c like they do in the calculations. So, if you calculate a 15K investment being paid back at 15KwH (average through the year), at 35c per KwH then your payback is $1916 per annum, making payback about 7.5 years. However. you will only get the benefit of about half of it, so your actual payback will be $1231 per annum, making payback 12 years at least. Then you have to consider the opportunity cost of the money, which is currently 6% so putting the money of the bank would earn you 900 dollars per year (less tax of course), however, the difference between 1231 and 900 is only 300 buck a year saved on a 15k investment. The returns are not great.
Yeah and that. The point really is though that this policy of making you borrow money and get a subsidy saves you actually less money than GST of Fruit and Vegetables. It's just another hopeless Labour policy that sounds good, but delivers almost nothing (but will leave you in debt for 5-10 years in this case).
I mean is it a bit of payback for all the stealing of the land anyway? I don't know, solar on Marae's, which are often in some of the more deprived places, sounds like good policy to me. Like solar on the rooves of schools makes sense too, the school is in use during the day so electricity is being produced and used locally.
Read the actual history of New Zealand. All the different iwi and tribes were constantly double dealing, selling each others land and goods. Legal promises made to the New Zealand Company and others were totally unenforceable because the land was sold by parties who had no real right to it. Same thing with the Land Wars, constant double dealing and treachery, being insurgents one day and 'allies' the next.
The Treaty has been warped into this legal framework for wealth extraction from the Crown to these iwi groups. The legal system is the least democratic part of our government and is always used to force unpopular stuff through.
The most guilty parties of the White side of the conquest/settlement of New Zealand is the land banking parties who purchased land on the cheap, stirred shit with the local maori and forced the militias/army to force the maori out then settled the land at higher prices.
Reading the primary sources makes you realise how dishonest the boomer historians writing during the 70s and 80s were on this subject.
So we wrote a treaty, nobody honoured it, but now Maori control a tiny percentage of resources considering their relative population or original purpose. That tiny percentage was going to be considerably more if the treaty was honoured
Maybe we should just go back and honour the treaty then? Back to the first principle? Instead of just claiming rights through conquering which is kind of just extending colonialism?
Why bring democracy into it? We forced that on Maori too.
They are caught by special interest groups and have a leader that is a property investor himself. Why anyone would believe they would do anything else is beyond me.
So don't vote for them. Vote for a party not captured by special interests, or mired in ideology like Labour. Vote different.
What a joke.
Kainga Ora, whom Woods presides over, have been building hundreds if not thousands of townhouses in Auckland over the past 5 years, many of which are overheating - and have had to have heat pumps installed retrospectively to allow for cooling over the hottest 6 months of the year. Some of the internal temperatures have been crazy, very uncomfortable and dangerous (healthwise)
All because that agency can’t do the basics of passive solar design. Which I told them and as usual was cast aside.
And now she has the cheek to talk about installing solar panels.
Even without passive solar design a good architect or architectural designer would be able to design to minimise heat gain in summer. This points to whether Housing NZ have in house architects or architectural designers who couldn't care less or contract staff who are there to milk the govt with people in Housing NZ who know nothing about design or construction. Another possibility is they went straight to builders who then sub contract designers and get the cheapest possible design so the build can be the bare minimum in order to win the contract. Either way it points to unsuitable people in Housing NZ.
It’s three main factors from what I see:
- A profoundly surprising lack of understanding of solar and ventilation design principles amongst many (including architects)
- Urban design dogma. Homes should run along a north-south street axis. This means internal living areas face east and west, for terraces. With the latter, homes are exposed to afternoon/evening western sun, plus…..
- architectural trend of no eaves and/or no window shades /shutters
our own home has all of these issues too. In the first summer the worst homes were reaching internal temperatures of well over 40 degrees. Pretty much everyone put in air con / multiple heat pumps, which are used regularly from November to May. Ours wasn’t quite as bad as its an end of terrace
Did anyone think to open a window?
Just askn...
My passive-solar house will go to - and past - 40 degrees every day through the summer months, and that's Dunedin! We open a downstairs window up-wind, and an upstairs window down-wind. Hot air still rises, seemingly irrespective of money. Quite interesting....
Here you go. Erik Townsend form Macro Voices energy transition trailer.
That will hook you into the full series.
Watch and learn.
You to Profile!
Seems to be partially a mixture of CC alarmism and running out of FF. It pre-supposes we must change now because we are going to run out soon (soon is 25,50,75,100 years, take your pick) FF will diminish over time an unreliables have a small part to play. In my book nothing to do with climate alarmism but merely another source of energy in the mix. Modern nuclear is the way to go but have been blocked in many parts of the world for one reason or another.
Hmm, I wonder if this is Bill Gates’ clean nuclear power plants re-imagined? He couldn’t get them over the line with Trump not allowing the IP to be exported, so here’s a new approach? Either way I do like that more people are attempting to expose the huge waste that wind farms are and just how much electric cars are not really changing the world or that there is not currently enough natural resource mines to achieve replacing whole countries like Britain’s fleet by 2035 or 2050.
Finally! But forget the battery side of it, see those big lakes in the SI? They are the batteries and we all can use them. Even if this mainly goes to middle/high income households, they will be subsidising dry year risk and mitigating emissions for all households in NZ, including low income. Because those households will be selling back electricity to a grid that has a gravity storage backbone that gets used less when the sun is shining and get paid only a half/third or the cost of buying back that electricity.
We needed this about 10 years ago Labour, or during your first term, with the EV rebate. But better late than never.
SEANZ have a vested interest in upping the ante, and making profit.
I have a system now nearing 20 years old, still representing south of 10k, all up. And it'd good for longer than I'll be around.
But that isn't the point here - we are running out - make that are out - of time. Fossil-reliant infrastructure (including much 'renewable' - really rebuildable) has run out of replacement time. In that light, ANY move is a good one.
Yes , i expect it will be restricted to systems installed by SEANZ members , as currently all govt jobs are, and the banks require it for the low interest loans too.
Ensures Accountability , and a certain standard of competence , to some degree I guess, but excludes some of the more independant types , like myself. It has become pretty much necessary to join to stay in the game in the coming years though.
In the early days on the Coromandel , we got people going with what they could afford , and what was avaliable. Solar panels were over $10 per watt, some would start with a single 80 watt panel , and get by . Add a panel etc as they could afford. Often , you might spend a day cleaning up the existing owners wiring , to make it safe before adding to. End up helping build the shed to put the solar on , because it inevitably wasn't done , a few times helping clear the road in. Or spend a few hours pulling your van out of the site access track.
Then you go to a SEANZ or similar conference , and get a whole lot of newbies on laptops, scoffing at such systems , telling you which reg or standard is broken etc , and obviously never been on a roof , probably never out of a office.
But probably changed nowadays.
January 2018 to December 2023 will see an increase in renewable generation of 1126mw
Hydro 245,wind 393mw,geothermal 240mw,248mw solar.
As demand is stationery,the subsidised electricity policies are more policy bribes,then a shortfall in capacity.roof top solar already grows by 60mw with either interest free loans from banks or PPA installations at no cost such as solar zero.
Stupid Labour Party thinking. And I am a big fan of solar and have a good sized setup.
The stupidity is in what they are not offering to do. Which is build a distributed generation system, so all us solar owners can co-operate to great benefit at negible cost and great savings. And remediate the dry lakes problem and overall benefit the nation.
We need to have law which enable the local co-operatives, IT systems to make it all work etc etc.
But you know that requires some comprehensive thinking and an interest in benefiting to the Nation. Labour don't have that.
Likely if you are a solar owner, you were rich enough to be able to put panels on your roof. That means you are likely in the to 30% income earners. Grid connected solar with hydro backbone means everyone connected to the grid gets to benefit from your solar, that's living in a society/civilised way. Moaning that you should be able to internalise all the benefits to the rich only is, well a bit pathetic IMO. Especially when buyback still happens after about 10 years, so you still get around 15-25 years of profits.
Fantastic policy idea that has worked great in that country we are always so jealous of - Australia. Literally power to the people.
Naturally here the naysayers think NZ is special and solar can’t possibly work. I suggest these are the same naysayers that have jammed this country into do-nothing neutral for the last 30 years, and rejoice at the idea of 3 more years of a do-nothing National government.
Assuming I’ve got the policy right it’s a subsidy to the rich. (The full policy detail is not given)
No one that is poor can afford solar panels except where the government provides them on social housing.
The subsidy should be inversely proportional to income+wealth.
We welcome your comments below. If you are not already registered, please register to comment.
Remember we welcome robust, respectful and insightful debate. We don't welcome abusive or defamatory comments and will de-register those repeatedly making such comments. Our current comment policy is here.