Kiwi farmers stand to save big on energy bills, create new revenue streams and build resilience to power outages by investing in solar and batteries, Mike Casey says.
“There is an opportunity on most farms in New Zealand to start saving money today by adopting at least some of the electric technology available,” the chief executive of Rewiring Aotearoa says.
“By electrifying their machines and running them off solar and battery systems, farmers could save tens of thousands a year in operational costs.
“And if they have enough panels and batteries, they can go one step further and make money by selling electricity back to the grid.
“Generating and storing your own electricity also means you might not even notice grid outages during adverse weather events. It really enhances rural resilience.”
Casey told the Federated Farmers Podcast the cost of solar panels, batteries and electric machinery is coming down all the time, so the barrier to entry is quickly falling.
He says there are a couple of obvious places for many farmers to start on their shift to solar.
“The first is those large irrigation pumps, which might run your pivots or even your K-Line system, and the other is those large chillers that exist on dairy farms.
“Those are both electric already and I think just beginning to generate energy from solar to run those is one of the best, first steps you can make.
“The great thing about this is it’s super modular: you can continue to add more solar panels and more batteries into a system over time, and you just grow organically.”
Casey, well known for establishing the world’s first fully electric cherry orchard in Central Otago, says he’s not preaching that every farmer should go 100% electric right now.
“That won’t be practical for many farmers because, for example, there are no 200-horsepower electric tractors on the market at the moment.
“But there’s a lot of other low-hanging fruit out there.
“It’s just about looking at where the technologies are available off the shelf right now for you to save a lot of money and potentially create a new revenue stream.”
By using solar power and diesel-free machinery on his Forest Lodge cherry orchard, Casey has reduced the cost of generating power down to about one-fifth of what it would cost from the grid.
“We probably spent about $450,000 more on machines putting this business together and making it fully electric, but we save about $40,000 a year in energy costs.
“It stacks up with a reasonably good ROI (return on investment) of just over 10 years, and that was based on 2020 prices.
“The good thing is the price of all this technology has just continued to come down over the last couple of years, so it’s a pretty exciting space to be playing in now.”
One sticking point for farmers is that, at present, they can’t gain the full value from rooftop solar when they have multiple connection points on one farm, Casey says.
“These electricity connections all have separate bills from retailers, so solar can’t be used across the whole farm without having to be exported on a low export tariff and then imported again on a much higher tariff.
“This destroys much of the economic incentive for installing solar on many farms.”
It’s an issue Rewiring Aotearoa hears about often from farmers, and the organisation has called on the Government to make some changes.
“What we’d like to see is that farms with multiple connection points should be able to group them together for billing purposes,” Casey says.
“There may be other valid solutions, but we think the most straightforward way to do this is to net the imports and exports across all the connections at one site and bill on this net basis.
“This would require a change to regulation that means fairer incentives for farmers to install solar.”
Casey says this would help unlock a new renewable supply that would help push down high electricity prices, benefiting all Kiwi consumers.
If each of the roughly 50,000 Kiwi farms installed mid-scale solar systems, they could generate electricity equal to 63-75% of the country’s current total consumption.
Rewiring Aotearoa is also asking the Government to level the playing field so customers with solar and batteries can compete with the big generators.
“Our 20th century energy system was one-way: from generators to homes, farms and businesses.
“But the system needs to be two-way. Customers need to be seen as a critical part of the infrastructure, and they need to be rewarded fairly for their contribution.”
