The case for energy loans: read our latest explainer
The Post's Alka Prasad has gone deep into how farmers are electrifying their operations, installing solar and batteries to alleviate concerns about dry years, and reducing their energy costs. As Maniototo farmer and owner of Solayer Becks Smith says in the story: "It's not an either-or situation from hydro-generated electricity to solar-generated electricity. It's about having a renewable electricity grid and shifting as far from fossil-fuel energy as we can,” she says. “For business resilience, the energy you can generate and use yourself is the cheapest energy you'll ever get." Rewiring Aotearoa CEO and electric orchardist Mike Casey says "farmers could have a huge positive influence on New Zealand's electricity system by generating power themselves and putting it into the grid for everybody else to be able to heat their homes, heat their water and charge their electric vehicles". "We can treat our hydropower scheme more like a battery which could power our homes and businesses at night time and solar can do a lot of the grunt work during the day,” he adds.
Read moreDownload the document hereIn the last Electric Avenue of 2025, we look at the two biggest trends in the world of energy; the Government goes electric for its fancy fleet upgrade; Nick Offerman offers his services to a US campaign extolling the virtues of EVs; Australia shows what's possible in new homes when you add solar, batteries and smart tech; a start-up selling portable solar and battery systems that wants it to be as easy and common as wi-fi; and The Lines Company looks to put some solar on the roof of the Ōtorohanga Kiwi House.
Read moreDownloadWhen it comes to electric farming, "the numbers are becoming undeniable," says Nicholson Poultry's Jeff Collings. With 60kW of solar, a Nissan Leaf as a 'farm quad', electric mowers, an electric ute that can run a water blaster, and even a chicken manure scraper made out of a wrecked Tesla that, as Rewiring's Matt Newman says, looks a bit like something out of Mad Max, "almost everything is electric". There aren't many others in New Zealand who have gone this far down the electric road. And, with his electric Stark Varg, the fastest off-road motorbike in the world, he's obviously having plenty of fun on that road, too.
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