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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