The right way to electrify your home

Kia ora, Mike.

Thanks for being on the Prosperity Project.

Kia ora, Nadine.

Thank you very much for having me.

I'm interested to hear how, in the time that you've been an advocate of solar, the economics of it have changed.

Because once upon a time, people would say, look, it's great, brings down your power bill, but the upfront cost is just so high that it isn't worth it.

So how much have you seen that shift?

Yeah, we've seen it shift pretty significantly in the last few years.

The price of installations across the country has come down really significantly.

And we're pretty much at the point now where if you put $20,000 on your mortgage, for example, to install solar on the roof, it'll return you $60,000 by the time those solar panels get to their end of life.

So that is a pretty remarkable outcome.

And what we're trying to really make sure more and more New Zealanders understand now is just when you amateurize the cost of these things, it's a fraction of the price of grid electricity, which is a fraction of the price of all other forms of energy.

So really starting to move New Zealanders down that rate of high adoption like what we've seen happen in Australia.

That's a pretty phenomenal rate of return, and we are going to dig into the numbers a little bit later.

But I am wondering whether you expect the maths to continue to improve, because I guess it's being driven by quite a few things, right? We've had a spike in power prices.

Kia ora, Mike.

Thanks for being on the Prosperity Project.

Kia ora, Nadine.

Thank you very much for having me.

I'm interested to hear how, in the time that you've been an advocate of solar, the economics of it have changed.

Because once upon a time, people would say, look, it's great, brings down your power bill, but the upfront cost is just so high that it isn't worth it.

So how much have you seen that shift?

Yeah, we've seen it shift pretty significantly in the last few years.

The price of installations across the country has come down really significantly.

And we're pretty much at the point now where if you put $20,000 on your mortgage, for example, to install solar on the roof, it'll return you $60,000 by the time those solar panels get to their end of life.

So that is a pretty remarkable outcome.

And what we're trying to really make sure more and more New Zealanders understand now is just when you amateurize the cost of these things, it's a fraction of the price of grid electricity, which is a fraction of the price of all other forms of energy.

So really starting to move New Zealanders down that rate of high adoption like what we've seen happen in Australia.

That's a pretty phenomenal rate of return, and we are going to dig into the numbers a little bit later.

But I am wondering whether you expect the maths to continue to improve, because I guess it's being driven by quite a few things, right? We've had a spike in power prices.