News & Updates

Earning a place on this week's electrification podium, Auckland's new electric bus hub (and Palmerston North's big electric bus investment), Germany's new law enshrining solar rights and how tenants can benefit from publicly-owned panels in Zurich, an Australian experiment shows how EVs could play a role during grid emergencies (and why we need smart charging to reduce stress on the grid), and the inside story of New York's first all-electric skyscraper.

IDTechEx’s new report Battery Markets in Construction, Agriculture and Mining (CAM) Machines 2024-2034 shows CAM machines require a diverse range of battery solutions to cater to their individual needs, especially in agriculture such as tractors. Senior technology analyst Dr James Jeffs has looked at the different use cases and where they work best and the report shows battery demand for off-highway industries will be worth $8 billion by 2034. Rewiring Aotearoa chief executive Mike Casey gets a mention after his orchard introduced the Monarch electric tractor to the country, where it performs well for low-energy tasks like mowing.

The cup runneth over with good electrification news and this week's selection features EVs becoming cheaper than fossil cars in China, a promising peer-to-peer electricity sharing scheme on Aotea / Great Barrier Island, massive growth in renewable generation (and massive opportunity for New Zealand to become the Saudi Arabia of renewable electricity), Energy Mad reaches a milestone, and a special electric toy for the snow lovers.

"Mike Casey is a 'nerd' (of his own admission) in the world of electrification, he's blazing the trial right out front showing the rest of us what can be done and he's then very kindly sharing all his knowledge so we can learn and uptake as it suits our businesses. This is an exciting conversation that really ignited the flame of opportunity and how farming can be a solution to the country's energy issues!"

“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]."

It's pretty rare for someone to be invited back to the E Tipu Agri Summit two years in a row, but Mike Casey has plenty to talk about. Rewiring Aotearoa's Electric Farms paper proved there are similar benefits for the rural sector if we can turn farms into power plants and, as he says - and as he has shown on his own cherry orchard - New Zealand’s farmers could reduce their operational costs by going electric and generating a lot of their own electricity through mid-scale solar and battery systems. And they can also make money by feeding electricity back into the grid at times of high demand. “Whether in the home or on the farm, electrification is a real win-win. It’s not just the right environmental decision anymore, it’s the right economic decision. It’s a no-brainer. We just have to figure out how to make it easy.”

Queenstown, Wānaka and the surrounding region have committed to one of the world’s most ambitious climate targets and pledged to create a carbon-zero visitor economy by 2030. It’s great to have a bold target to aim for but, as renowned electricity lover Thomas Edison said, vision without execution is just hallucination – and right now, the region is a long way off track and lagging behind a number of other places. So how can the region go from talking to walking? It basically all boils down to this: everything that can be electrified needs to be electrified - and quickly. Read Mike Casey's full opinion piece on Newsroom.

Another great piece from RNZ's Eloise Gibson about our mixed rankings in the global EV charging stakes and the need to lift our game as EVs become more popular (globally, nearly one in five cars sold in 2023 was electric, a 35 percent year-on-year increase). The government promised 10,000 more public chargers by 2030 and $257 million in funding has been allocated to that goal. At this stage, it's not clear where that money will be spent, but one option that isn't explored in the story is the potential to make use of our 50,000 farms. Farmers investing in mid-scale solar and battery systems could not only power their own machines much more affordably and earn money for sending electricity back to the grid at peak times, but they could also become part of an extensive national charging network and create another new revenue stream. Farms are usually very close to the medium voltage networks, meaning they can scale up renewable systems without physical constraints or undue overloading risks to the distribution networks.

On this week's e-highlight reel, electricity generating windows from across the Tasman, the role community-owned microgrids can play in regional areas, the rise of electric boats, and how heat pumps save money and reduce emissions.

Across the world, farmers and machinery producers are stepping up to the challenge of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by electrifying essential equipment and exploring alternative fuels ... In New Zeland's Otago, cherry producer Mike Casey has been running a 6-hectare orchard without using any fossil fuels. Last year, it produced 80 tonnes of cherries for local and export markets. His fleet of 21 electric machines includes prototypes and traditional vehicles that have been converted to electric. "I never envisioned us going fully electric; I was just sort of thinking there will be some things that we can do to cut out diesel and cut our emissions," he said. "But what actually happened is we discovered we'd save about $40,000 a year of energy costs on our farm."

New Zealand is going to need a lot more electricity as homes and businesses swap out fossil fuel machines for much more efficient electric versions. MBIE has just released a report showing a range of different scenarios and under favourable economic conditions the demand for electricity could rise by 81 percent by 2050. Where we get all that extra electricity from is an important strategic question for New Zealand and the report says wind and solar will be the "least cost" way to meet this demand. At Rewiring Aotearoa, we believe a lot of the extra electricity we need could come from rooftop solar and because it is produced where it is used it is the cheapest form of delivered electricity New Zealanders can get. Batteries are also dropping in price and rooftop solar and battery combinations can reduce peak loads while saving on energy bills. This is vital context for how we choose to build out the energy system to be low cost and highly resilient.

On this week's electrification highlight reel, Contact Energy's new grid-scale battery project with Tesla, how the really big machine manufacturers are going electric, solar power reaches a big audience - and a big milestone - and a succinct summary of the efficiency of electric machines.

New Zealanders sometimes need endorsement from overseas before we realise we've got something special and the Aussies seem to be picking up up what Mike Casey is putting down. Following a keynote presentation at an agricultural conference in Perth, ABC's RN Drive show spoke to Mike about his all-electric orchard.

The Guardian Australia's Aston Brown looks at the promise of electric technology in the agricultural sector as well as some of the existing barriers to update and talks to Mike Casey about the opportunities that already exist in horticulture and viticulture. He also talks to Terry Krieg, the co-founder of Linttas Electric Company, who is developing a semi-autonomous combine harvester that claims to reduce fuel use by a third. But it's not just about reducing carbon emissions and costs, says Prof. Ray Willis, managing director of Future Smart Strategies. “It’s about redesigning the vehicle for the first time in 100 years. If you make it electric, inevitably it turns out to be better, more durable, more reliable.”

Rewiring Aotearoa CEO Mike Casey was invited to be the keynote speaker at AgZero 2030 conference in Perth recently, where he spoke about the opportunity in front of Australian farmers to do as he has done and electrify the machines on their farms and produce as much of the energy required to run them via rooftop solar - with battery storage offering another potential revenue stream. Not only does this save farmers money, it drastically reduces emissions through diesel use and, as the Countryman reported Casey as saying, "when everyone is winning, you don't need to fight".

The Otago Daily Times and The South Today covered the inaugural Electrify Queenstown conference at Millbrook Resort yesterday. Destination Queenstown chief executive Mat Woods said the event was to show "the benefits of electrification, and what businesses can electrify such as vehicles, heating and cooking methods" and there was a huge amount of interest from the business community. "It was important to build an understanding that when things need to be replaced, replacing them with electric alternatives are not only better for the planet, but can also be cheaper, and more reliable ... Realistically we expected 50 people to turn up, but we had to cap attendance for the morning’s panel at 150 people." Rewiring Aotearoa's Mike Casey was the keynote speaker, and his electric tractor even provided heating for the tradeshow in the marquee.

Rewiring Aotearoa was proud to be part of the inaugural Electrifying Queenstown event at Millbrook alongside more than 150 members of the local business community. DQ boss Mat Woods told Mountain Scene the idea for the event was sparked by the Electric Homes report about New Zealand becoming one of the first countries in the world to reach the ‘‘tipping point’’ and there's a positive peer pressure in the Southern Lakes air as the region attempts to create a carbon zero visitor economy by 2030. To reach that goal it will have to, as Mike Casey said at the event, electrify everything that can be electrified - and quickly. As Kinloch Wilderness Lodge's Toni Glover said, the best way to do that is 'just start'. Kudos to Destination Queenstown, the Queenstown Business Chamber and Aurora for making it happen. We'd love to see more events like this right across the country so we can share the economic and environmental opportunities of electrification to more Kiwi businesses. Where next?

This week on our electrification compendium, the country's coolest coffee delivery van, potentially the country's coolest truck, a new report with lots of amazing graphs on the transition to clean energy, how EVs should be seen as batteries on wheels and Climate Town's explanation of the dirty tricks the gas industry has used to keep us hooked up.

Consumer NZ's Powerswitch has been a great resource for customers looking to save money by changing providers. But the latest issue of its magazine is focused on the money (and emissions) Kiwis can save if they change their energy source from fossil fuels to electricity - and how there are even more savings on the table if you invest in solar panels. Consumer used a lot of the data created in Rewiring Aotearoa and EECA's Electric Homes report, and there are some handy tips in there for anyone thinking about upgrading their gas appliances or petrol vehicles.

Rewiring Aotearoa's Mike Casey has plenty of fans, but the electric ones on his orchard are definitely the biggest. EECA's Technology Demonstration Fund helped Forest Lodge import and install two electric frost fighting fans in 2020 and, as the case study says, "the company has saved thousands on energy bills and significantly reduced its carbon emissions. These successes have been achieved without sacrificing frost-fighting performance". You might not need your own frost fighting fans, but electric equivalents - from hot water heat pumps to electric vehicles - are now cheaper to run and better for the environment.