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“What I get a lot is people talk about electric vehicles and what they say with electric vehicles is that they’re great for people in the city, but they’re not great for the people in the country,” Casey told the 2024 National Renewables in Agriculture Conference in Queensland. “And I always have to remind them that that couldn’t actually be further from the truth. Literally, the more [kilometres] you drive, the better off you are driving an electric vehicle ... If charging purely from the grid it costs us around $9 for a full charge, however with our solar and battery array we are expecting the cost to be closer to $2 a charge and are currently collecting the data to verify this ... One of the most remarkable things we now see in New Zealand is the number of farmers that are adopting electric vehicles because they’re starting to realise that per kilometre cost [of fuelling them is] significantly less than [petrol or diesel]."
Read moreDownload the document hereWe're really trucking along this week as Foodstuffs goes electric; Etrucks' Ross Linton crunches the numbers with the current prices and says there's never been a better time to get an electric truck; the New Zealand Trucking Association says we should be running on New Zealand-made energy; Australia - the world's biggest importer of diesel - sees demand for electric trucks rise as price parity is reached and shows that electric long-distance freight is possible; legacy automakers are seeing this fuel crisis as existential (and Mike Casey picked the petrol car hot potato scenario last year); dirty ol' diesel generators might be on the outer as battery solutions for festivals and conferences come into play; a potential cultural tipping point as Daniel Craig backs luxury Chinese EV brand Denza; and you've heard of Ranger Anxiety but how about Ramxiety?
Read moreDownloadIf you've got solar, the best option is to use as much of it as possible to avoid high grid prices, but being paid to export energy is a nice cherry on top. It means many New Zealanders end up getting paid by their power company and shorten the payback period of their systems. Regulatory changes that meant customers would be paid more for exporting at peak times were meant to make batteries more appealing to customers and reduce the need for more investment in expensive poles and wires, but, as Marc Daalder writes in Newsroom, some retailers are not passing on the full value of those exports.
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