Demand for rooftop solar has surged about 400 percent over the past three to four months as the fuel crisis pushes households to look for ways out of the petrol pump and the power bill, with the government this week ordering a review of installation rules that critics say make New Zealand one of the slowest and most expensive countries in the developed world to switch to solar.
The figure comes from Solar Craft owner Tim Dudek, who has been installing systems for 16 years and told RNZ that the industry is now coping with a wave of new orders driven by the worst fuel supply squeeze the country has seen in decades. New Zealand still holds only 38 days of onshore fuel cover, and pump prices have stayed high while offshore reserves do most of the heavy lifting on the national stockpile. For households with a north facing roof, the maths on a panel system has shifted in a way it did not look at this time last year.
Even with the surge, only three to four percent of New Zealand homes have solar installed. The Australian comparison is brutal. More than 30 percent of Australian households now run rooftop solar, and in Victoria approval for a small residential system can be granted within 24 hours after a licensed inspector reviews installation photos. In New Zealand the same job involves up to eight layers of sign off, up to five site visits from four separate entities, and a wait that Solar Craft says runs one to two months from the first call to switch on.
Regulation Minister David Seymour announced the review on 7 May at Electric Cherries near Cromwell, the Central Otago orchard that bills itself as the country’s first fully electric farm. Seymour described the current process as a red tape nightmare and said the goal was to make New Zealand the simplest place in the developed world to install solar. The Ministry of Regulation will look at lines company rules, electrician sign off requirements, and the question of why a system cleared as safe in Australia still has to run a separate compliance gauntlet here, as RNZ first reported.
Mike Casey, who owns Electric Cherries and runs the lobby group Rewiring Aotearoa, has been pushing for a faster approval pathway for years and said approval for low risk residential solar should be instant in New Zealand the way it is across the Tasman. Casey told Rewiring Aotearoa that this was the first time he had seen Wellington move quickly on something that benefited households rather than network operators. The Sustainable Energy Association of New Zealand, which represents installers, has lobbied for a single national standard for a decade and only saw the country’s solar standards lifted to roughly Australian levels last year.
The cost picture is the other half of the story. Professor Alan Brent of Victoria University of Wellington said the headline barrier was not paperwork but the upfront capital outlay. Solar Craft put a typical home system at $25,000 to $40,000 fitted, with a battery adding more on top. Average annual power savings of around $1,000 mean the payback runs more than a decade for a cash purchase, which is why almost every industry submission to the review has flagged access to low cost finance as the lever that would actually move the dial. Australia’s market took off when state and federal subsidies, accredited installers and rebates pulled the breakeven inside the bill cycle of an average mortgage holder.
Plug in balcony solar, the small panel and inverter kits that apartment dwellers across Europe can buy off the shelf and slot into a wall socket, are still illegal here. Industry submissions have asked for them to be legalised under a low risk pathway, which would open rooftop power to renters and townhouse residents who cannot retrofit a permanent system. Seymour signalled that the review would consider the change.
The wider energy backdrop is the reason this matters. The OECD this week warned that New Zealand wholesale electricity prices are structurally too high and called for a firming market to break the dependence on a shrinking gas supply. Channel Infrastructure has just lifted its profit guidance because Marsden Point is running at full tilt, and the country’s onshore fuel reserves have shrunk to 38 days. Every household that puts panels on a roof is one less unit of demand on the wholesale market and one less litre of imported petrol burnt in a commute. The shift will not be quick, but the regulatory tilt is clearly underway.
For now the bottleneck is people. Solar Craft and other installers are running multi week waiting lists, and the government brought in a fast track electrician training programme last November precisely because the workforce has not kept pace with demand. If the Seymour review trims approval times to anything close to the Victorian standard, the next constraint will be qualified hands on roofs rather than ticks in regulator boxes.
What do you think. Will deregulation alone push solar past four percent of households, or is the missing piece still cheap finance and a proper rebate scheme. Let us know in the comments.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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