Something I have been wondering about for awhile that I would be interested in comments on.
Given the need for more renewable power to avoid using coal fired generators, along with the increasing pressure on the grid due to the influx of electric vehicles, it seems that the government urgently needs more renewable sources of energy.
Options such as building dams etc are incredibly expensive, environmentally damaging, and take many years to impliment.
Given those constraints, why doesn't the government introduce a scheme to heavily subsidise domestic solar power generation and storage? Especially for houses where that option would be effective.
This type of solution should be much faster to implement, and wouldn't have the environmental issues associated with other power generation options. Plus, it would also have the benefit of lowering power costs for consumers, and thus reduce their living costs. Imagine the impact on power generation if even say 30% of houses in NZ had solar panels and storage.
I believe there was some sort of subsidy scheme around solar a number of years back, but I don't think that is around anymore. But it seems like a sensible option given the costs of the alternatives. I just don't understand why it isn't happening already.
Minister Parker has in his drafting hand the ability to amend the new version of the RMA to specifically enable "renewable energy generation" in the text, rather than rely on the far weaker National Policy Statement on Renewable Energy Generation which TBF merely acts as a guide to local governments when evaluating such applications.
My suspicion is that Minister Woods will not be shaken out of her torpor to amend the Electricity Authority to expand its remit into something useful, until there is a further major blackout from renewables as occurred last year.
Until then we have just two weeks until the Carbon plan is showered with billions from the new Fund. Your guess is as good any what that will achieve in the mitigation v adaptation game.
"There are no subsidies or incentives in New Zealand for homeowners to install solar power systems. The Government did provide subsidies for solar hot water systems for a few years, but that was never applied to solar power."
I imagine there are a number of impediments, not least of which is the fact almost all of the materials will have to be imported….then there is capacity to install/maintain at the level you outline (30% of households = 600,000 units) and issues with grid stability.
It will be a slowly solved (if at all) problem I suspect, especially given we are likely returning to supporting our economy through population growth.
I have submitted to the Queenstown Lakes District Council saying that it should be compulsory for all new buildings to install solar when they are built.
I would have thought solar farms, or hydro dams, have a bigger footprint on the landscape than wind generators. Which of course still have a much smaller footprint than AGW.
Then there is tidal power. Ideal spot not far away.
Queenstown is about as far away from the ocean as you can get (unless you are suggesting the small tide that Lake Wakatipu has?). It's also very unsuitable for wind power for the immediate area, which would mean shifting electricity from Central or Northern Southland, and that starts to defeat the purpose.
Anyone know if grid tied solar or wind can be adapted to off grid if a quake takes out the grid connection?
There is a safety issue, that you don't want the solar or wind powering up the grid supply part during a grid power cut. Not nice to get zapped when you expect the line to be dead.
I have recall of a tv item about a solar farm with the panels set high enough that the cattle or sheep could graze round them and use their shade in the summer. I don't recall the name of the programme. Someone else may have better recall.
N.B.: There are large protests in Europe about the number of windmills planned as it also means that land is being made to concrete deserts. You might power your vehicle but you wont have anything to eat. (So to speak).
Recommendation is generally that residential housing should be 2 Km away. Low frequency noise can interfere with the health of people living close by. The effects are studied and we should not forget that we are not looking at a lot of time when data is collected.
I am all for alternative generation, but we don't need to but the baby out with the water. Calling concerns with a "swoosh" rubbish is not very constructive. I appreciate that you might have a firm point of view because it seems you were working close to Marsden point. Nonetheless, I stand by what I have written.
Go for a drive through the vast French countryside and you will see (but not hear) wind generators dotted all over the landscape…and no concrete in sight.
Pat, if you drive through the French countryside you should pick up a paper in the next town. You might read about the concerns of the folks that have to live near the turbines and farmers who lose arable land. Also, the blades need changing on occasions and give me a guess what happens with them? Yep, they are just deposited on the ground. How green is that!
I am all for Windmills but some reason and science has to apply. Unless you want to pay a gold bar for a kg of potatoes.
…foundations are usually simple concrete blocks called footings that are placed under building walls and columns, or in the case of wind turbines, beneath the tower.
A typical slab foundation for a 1 MW turbine would be approximately 15 m diameter and 1.5 – 3.5 m deep. Turbines in the 1 to 2 MW range typically use 130 to 240 m3 of concrete for the foundation. Multi-pile foundations are used in weaker ground conditions and require less concrete.
Your wind turbines are going to have a capacity factor of around maybe 20% in a good location. So you will need roughly 5 times more of them than your calculation suggests.
Then you need to consider that much of the land does not have a good wind potential or that some seasons can have weeks of low wind. Gets messy quickly.
Compare to biofuels which does require significant land use.
And. A large proportion of the best wind locations are not suitable for housing or farming. Steep and windswept, are places we use for sheep, or gorse.
NZ on a global scale has a reasonably good wind resource and getting the current annual contribution from around 4% to say 20% seems feasible and desirable.
Although given much of the easy, high productivity sites have already been utilised – it will probably take a covering a bit more land than you would imagine to get us even to 20%. And that assumes there is never any growth in total demand into the future.
On a global scale the picture is even less rosy – but given how we have seen Greenies shut down perfectly good nuclear power plants so as to intentionally burn more brown coal – I guess anything is possible.
They may but i suspect their solution will be more along the lines of large schemes (solar pumped hydro at Onslow?) implemented and controlled by the main sector players rather than individual set ups.
The time frames on fleet replacement may never come to fruition.
The Onslow project does look like it has potential Pat. But it is going to take time. With the lack if rainfall down South this year, we could really have done with this now:
Dry year storage—we are specifically investigating Lake Onslow given its ability to store up to 5-7TWh for dry year support
Intermittency back up—our existing hydro lakes can increase or decrease their output to offset the variation in wind or solar generation, but this capacity is limited. Pumped hydro could provide a form of back-up to ensure electricity supply and demand is met when generation from solar, wind and existing hydro are not enough.
I recall that the Green Party used to have a plan to install Solar panels on schools to act as cores for community produced electricity (less line loss). But that isn't even in the online precis of their clean energy policy anymore. Though there is proposed solar support more in line with what was discussed upthread:
1. We’ll upgrade all 63,000 social and community homes with solar panels and batteries
2. We’ll introduce grants to halve the price of installing solar in privately-owned homes, and offer grants and low-interest loans for businesses to transition to renewable energy
I imagine that; social and community homes, means Kaianga Ora (HNZ). I didn't trawl through the full detail pdf to find out. It all comes down to postelection numbers next year anyway.
Though the GP have always been good with other parties swiping their ideas, so long as the ill gets cured.
The solar on schools (and businesses) is an interesting one…I have seen a number of reports on instances and the overwhelming theme is they only partially offset use….some at very low levels, which highlights KJTs point about economy of scale, not to mention the fact a few major players are easier to coordinate than 10s of thousands individual installations.
I guess the GP might have crunched the numbers and found that the cost benefit analysis didn't stack up. I think it was more Hughes who was pushing for it, so with him out of Parliament these days, it has languished a bit.
It was certainly an ambitious scheme. But if the government can mandate the abolishing of coal burners in schools, they can certainly make funding conditional upon schools allowing them to install solar panels and batteries on their grounds. Especially since the schools would have first call on the subsidized power thus produced.
Weka had a point (somewhere) upthread about the fragility of the lines system. Which is certainly true in Dunedin where decades of underfunding (to prevent rates increases) have left the grid in a woeful state. Having a more distributed network would give more systematic resilience.
Solar on schools, reduces the cost of outgoings for the school,produces good surpluses over holidays and weekends,and a surplus back to the grid for the peak use ,(during the spring to autumn period) where you can reduce daytime hydro flows.
As more uptake comes on stream,then surpluses can be banked into community batteries (which essentially become local peakers) and reduces the high cost of distribution.
A major cost in installing PV solar is that you really need to run it through batteries and inverties unless you want to fry your old electrical gear. Did that to a keyboard up in a commune about a decade back – never did get another with quite the same tone bank settings. Though the tech has probably improved these last few years.
Anyway, it is still likely more efficient for a medium size structure such as a school to aggregate and distribute the local solar electricity network with good sized battery banks and true sine-wave inversions (rather than many budget setups with modified square-wave).
Excess could be shunted off to the grid more easily than with multiple small connections from individual houses. And likely get bulk discount on buyback to make that work out better too. Sure, maybe not as technically efficient as larger projects, but also avoiding lots of line-loss. More of an intermediate step.
Though Pandemic supply lines to this country might be too stretched to make this viable at present. Plus no one really seems to be advocating for it anymore.
Community batteries store the excess generation locally when households are at work etc.They return to the local grid for the peak flows .This reduces the need for local network upgrades,transmission loss etc.
There's a lot of unbuilt wind farms in Southland (you could say Southland is the Saudi Arabia of wind), that haven't been built because there's nothing apart from more coal to provide backup on the rare day's it's not blowing it's tits of along the south coast.
Onslow and / or the Tiwai hydrogen proposal will get those wind proposals going and I suspect a lot more. Could be an interesting period coming up for the South with the Green Hydrogen development leading to a dramatic expansion of the region's industrial sector.
That is a useful site Pat…thanks for the link. We've flirted with the idea of a hybrid system with battery back up for our wee place here in the Far North, but have been disappointed with the detail provided from the couple of 'quotes' we've had. $30,000 or a 5kw system…no idea of how many panels, batteries, brands etc. Most seem to be tied into some kind arrangement with a particular electricity retailer. The 'we're not sure if there will be over runs on installation until we start…' proviso, in small print at the bottom of the quote leaves me more than a little nervous. I did purchase a generator to keep freezers and our pumps running and have an 'ups' thingy as back up for the phone an internet.
And an update on this major solar power project… you'll be pleased to know that the crop of maize grown on this site was harvested a month or so ago, so I guess there has been solar energy utilized. Other than a sign and a chunky gravel carpark the sod-turning photo- op is as far as its gone.
I think individual solar good IF you can develop a system for your own use AND have some form of storage but despite the sales pitch the commercially available set ups still require considerable outlay and pay back periods are extensive….the costs increase considerably the moment it is grid tied.
Personally I would like to try to build a battery based system using DC only. Feed that with AC and covert to DC appliances at various voltage/amp. Almost everything i use is DC in their internal reality. Computers monitors, TVs, power tools, fans,
The exception appears to be heat generators like ovens, stove tops, heater, hot water…
Inverters are a waste of power. So are most of electric AC to DC adapters.
Then once that is running – look at alternate power supplies to feed DC batteries. Pointless having alternate power sources ifbyou are going to have major inefficiences in converting DC to AC to DC to charge a phone (for instance).
I wouldn’t bother feeding the grid when I had excess. The rates are pitiful against the equipment costs to do that. I would need the grid to get the electric ecosystem setup, and as a supplement.
Yes but most dont have the ability to create a bespoke system for themselves….and the moment you tie to the grid you are bound to use approved (and consequently) more expensive componentry, not to mention various fees.
A 12v system is common in many home designed systems often tied to 12v appliances.
Those who want individual households to install solar power, are ignoring efficiencies and economics of scale..
Individual small solar installations are many times more expensive and require more manufactured resources, than a large solar or wind installation.
Government money is better used in building larger scale sustainable generation, for everyone instead of subsidising upper middle class who can afford to add solar panels.
While we have a privatised electricity industry whose business model depends on keeping energy scarce and expensive, though!
The economics of roof solar have changed dramatically over the last few years. Two minutes of surfing showed this:
"Costs for solar energy systems have come down substantially over the past decade. A fully-installed system in 2008 could run you about $40,000 — now, prices are only a fraction of that amount. The cost for a solar system starts around $5,990."
There's no reason that large scale solar farm can't be virtual and spread over a hundred or thousand roof tops.
That's what Solar Zero have done, but their model is putting their panels on your roof, and giving you cheaper (maybe) power in lieu of rent.
I'd be interested in a more co-operative model where the property owner owns the panels and shares in a wholesale marketing organisation to sell their surplus energy
I agree, it makes more sense from an efficiency point of view to build large solar arrays. I have seen these type of installations in Germany.
A counter to that is that such installations would take a long time to go through the approval process, actually get built, and have supporting infrastructure built. Also, they use up huge amounts of land. In that respect, is the offset cost of the lost opportunity cost of alternative usages for the land taken up by solar arrays. For instance, lost opportunities for food production, or even using the land for planting native forests as a carbon-offset.
While subsidies for domestic solar installations would not be as efficient, they would provide much quicker sources of renewable energy and wouldn't need the same amount of supporting infrastructure as they would be using the infrastructure already in existence.
Perhaps, a solar subsidy arrangement could be an interim goal to fill the gap while more efficient solutions are implemented over a longer timeframe.
Yes I agree with your thoughts above and have done so for at least 20 years! I worked in the solar hot water side for awhile – before PV became more viable – and even then there were immense gains to be made both economically and environmentally. WA had a similar scheme – sunny days are the rule there, so an obvious source of energy. Traveling in the train south from Perth you will see house after house with solar panels. It was so popular that the WA Govt overran its budget and, as it was then a liberal govt, cut the scheme. But the die had been cast and there is still a good uptake on solar energy installation on new builds.
Many of the solar hot water systems installed in NZ are manufactured in WA – it was there that they were developed.
Israel mandates all new buildings to be fitted with solar energy and has done for decades, obviously to reduce its reliance on imported fossil fuels.
Yes you are correct in that roof-top solar has far more penetration in Australia than NZ. As a guess I would say the rate is between 5 – 8 times higher.
Still the reality is that Australia has one of the best solar and wind power potential anywhere on the planet – and it is still a non-trivial task to turn off all the coal until you have solved the storage problem.
Last year saw Australians install rooftop solar like never before, with 40% more installed in 2021 than in 2020. Solar system installations now make up 7% of the energy going into the national electricity grid.
[…]
But such a dramatic surge in solar output also poses challenges for Australia’s power system for two main reasons.
It results in increased periods of large oversupply when weather conditions favour solar energy. This leads to energy being wasted due to the need for solar curtailment – when a solar system shuts down or stops exporting energy to the grid to counter the energy spike.
On the other hand, there is little solar generation during peak demand hours in the morning and evening. This requires more expensive generators to run.
These are huge problems from a market operations perspective, as the pressure on the system may result in blackouts and disruptions. It also creates large price swings for retailers, which then can increase costs for consumers. As a result, we may see it become more expensive to decarbonise the national energy market.
I came up with a hair brained scheme a while back where government rolls out solar that pays for itself.
Put solar on state housing and recoup the costs from tenants paying their power bills – but at the same time (calculated by their average/historic use) offer them some of the savings (will make buy in much easier) from the savings generated. Win – Win.
You could roll out a portion of it, show the bank the payments coming in, and get finance for the next portion. Very little govt spending required if they shuffle their cards right.
Many other government properties could do with the retrofit too.
It would make the government a major power generator in short order. And yes, it would certainly help take the pressure off our systems.
there was talk some time back of us manufacturing solar here. I have no idea why that's not happening, it was another no-brainer.
Given the need for more renewable power to avoid using coal fired generators, along with the increasing pressure on the grid due to the influx of electric vehicles, it seems that the government urgently needs more renewable sources of energy.
Here's what the sustainable and resilient solution looks like, see if you can spot the pattern:
use less power
stop wasting power
retrofit existing houses with passive solar tech/design
all new builds required to have passive solar tech/design (space and water heating in particular, doesn't have to be PassivHaus although that is one example)
retrofit existing houses with active solar (panels and water heaters), grid tied where appropriate
all new builds required to have active solar (panels and water heaters), grid tied where appropriate
build neighbourhood power generation that will withstand climate, quake, tsunami events (eg if the grid goes down, power can still be generated and reticulated locally)
build larger scale district power generation, as above
don't build any more Muldoon-esque power schemes unless there is a compelling reason to and that can be done with a) full community input and consultation and b) minimal environmental impact
What that does is use less resources, require less maintanence, create less pollution, make NZ more self sufficient, make local areas, neighbourhoods and households more self sufficient and resilient going into our climate and quake future.
outside my lane about what would work, but couple that with manufacturing components in NZ as much as possible.
At the moment, we have some pretty important infrastructure that relies on overseas manufacturers for replacement parts. Consider current supply line interruptions magnified, and what would happen if your town electricity or supply stopped working because something broke. How much redundancy do we have?
I can't say I disagree with any of that Weka. It just seems to make more sense compared to anything else which will be expensive, long to implement, and damaging to the environment.
I imagine such a solution would also have good buy-in from the public who would directly benefit from such a concept.
It's a good question that some of us have been asking for a while now. Would have to look up exactly when, but the Greens pushed quite some time ago (pre Key?) for solar install subsidies that would also have had the effect of upscaling solar business in NZ and thus lowering prices. You can understand why some of us are frustrated with NZ voters.
Further to my comment, probably the only point I would disagree with is that I don't think that the government should be subsidising or requiring (in the case of new builds) every house should have solar energy. That is because not all houses are oriented to efficiently take advantage of solar.
The optimal orientation is east-west oriented houses (with the exposed roof facing north). So, perhaps at the consenting side of the equation the approval authority could decide whether the orientation of the house qualifies for the government subsidy or not so that taxpayer money is used in the most efficiently.
Ha! Have you seen the new builds in Auckland. 8 townhouses crammed literally side-by-side on a section which previously contained 1 house.
Sections are covered to 95% of area with housing (and the rest is driveway).
Under the new government intensive building plans – town planners will have little if any control over what is built where.
Really. I invite you to take a look at the intensive housing going in along the main transit corridors (but still suburban streets) in Auckland.
Literally 4 doors down from me (side street connection to a main road) they are building 8 townhouses on the site where they've removed one house. They're 3 story – in order to get the most density on the site possible.
And the building is right from one boundary to the driveway (which is on the other boundary)
The only non-built space is the driveway.
This may have required a resource consent (i.e. isn't a normally allowed activity) – but they are routinely being rubber-stamped in Auckland's drive for intensification along PT corridors (and linked areas).
This is repeated on building-site after building-site across the suburbs I drive through.
For example, 50% max. building coverage on a site of 10 m by 20 m (200 meter squared) means the building footprint cannot be more than 100 meter squared, e.g. 6 m by 16 m (96 meter squared). To you that may look like 95% while in actual fact it is (only) 48%. (NB there are all sorts of boundary requirements, but this is just a simple example to illustrate your optical illusion)
In the real world: Building from one side of the site to the other (excluding the driveway), building from front berm to to back boundary.
I don't see in what rational world that can be described as 48% of the site.
I acknowledge that this may have required a resource consent for an exemption to the standard rules. However, as I said, these are clearly being routinely granted.
What I'm describing is anything but an isolated incident.
And the new legislation is specifically designed to allow 3x3story houses on the site where previously 1 was permitted.
Go argue with your calculator and work out the building footprint after you have measured yourself those sites with new housing builds (incl. terraced houses and apartments) that, in your mind, occupy 95% of the total site area. You may want to ask permission before you enter those properties. Alternatively, you could tell us the exact area you’re talking about; Auckland Council has these very handy maps and other handy data …
What you think you see in the real world is in your head.
I acknowledge that this may have required a resource consent for an exemption to the standard rules. However, as I said, these are clearly being routinely granted.
What I'm describing is anything but an isolated incident.
Spot the ambiguity if not contradiction.
And the new legislation is specifically designed to allow 3x3story houses on the site where previously 1 was permitted.
What does this have to do with building footprint maxima?
The new law requires Auckland Council to allow medium-density housing (3 houses of 3 stories high on the site currently required for one) – as a default across most of their area.
I expect this drive for intensification to continue. And the cheapest way for developers to do this, is what they're already doing: cramming as many townhouses as possible on a single site.
This amendment to the RMA does two things. Firstly, it requires tier 1 councils in Auckland, and greater Hamilton, Tauranga, Wellington and Christchurch to change their planning rules so most of their residential areas are zoned for medium density housing.
In other words, it has not happened yet (“from August 2022”), so you cannot have seen it yet, whatever it is that you think you saw.
No. What I'm seeing is resource consent variations over site-coverage being routinely granted to enable Auckland Council’s goals of intensification along PT corridors.
The point I was making is that this intensification (resulting in virtually zero un-built-on land on the site) will increase (and become more widespread) when the new legislation comes into effect.
At least you agree that the new legislation has not yet come into effect. Now, can you tell us what the building coverage limits are that are allegedly “resulting in virtually zero un-built-on land on the site” in the new legislation, which by your reckons is already happening in Auckland? You’re repeating the same stupid line but with not a shred of support.
They were not economical then,its only in the last 3-4 years that costs have decreased substantially as large scale manufacturing became more cost effective.
Private solar installations are already subsidised in a roundabout way. My son who has a PhD in Battery Technology countered my arguments about more house solar and why werent the prices paid for supply to the grid closer to what we pay. The reply was that there are a few unique aspects to NZs electricity systems, and the cost of production of is only about 7cents a kw, the distribution is the killer.
1, most of the rest of the world needs electricity to cool buildings in the summer when solar and wind is a lot more efficient, US and Europe heat their houses and factories with gas or oil and it will take quite sometime to phase out up to a billion systems. We on the other hand use electricity for heating in the winter and don't cool very many buildings in summer, our winter solution is to put on another bloody jersey, one area where our Scots and Irish heritage favours conservation!
2, the majority of the cost of electricity is in the distribution, and NZ is very difficult terrain to manage. I live 25kms from a large SI town yet between here and there there are tens of millions of dollars of installations, a lot disquised as normal houses used to manage voltage and other aspects, all of which require a huge amount of maintenance, again an almost unique NZ problem, because of the long distances and consequently a fraction of the consumers to pay for it compared to other countries.
Heres the political problem, more houses with solar means less consumers to pay for the distribution costs and that system is vital, small private solar installations are very prone to lack of sunlight and wind just when you need the power hence the need for most to be connected to the grid and the nessecity to pay the same as someone without solar supplementation. Just because you may ride a bike a lot of the time you still may need a car to do what cannot be managed on a bike and I'm pretty sure no government is going to subsidise the capital cost of a car for you just because it sits idle until you need it.
There are many, many other complications, but one of his interesting comments was that the future will see that a much larger proportion of the worlds industrial production will occur 10-20 degrees either side of the Equator in highly automated factories with few staff because of the amount of sunlight available ( closer to the sun ) and the reliability of tropical winds for cheaper energy and shorter freight distances, ( not by much but everything helps ).
Hey tsmithfield, do you want to walk back the lying propaganda you posted yesterday about another Russian ship being sunk? No evidence whatsoever except the lies you picked up from Western media. It didn't happen, just like the Russian Generals killed in action .. all bullshit .. You really need to learn how to do real research.
Yes – the whole invasion is a Nazi fake. Real research would show that Putin was correct all along when he told everyone back in Feb that Russia was never going to invade Ukraine.
Thanks for this. I met Paul just the once at Masterton Rail station on his way into the Tararuas and got to chat with him for a while. Yes he is a legend – quite well known.
I know for certain they took out a landing craft type boat as pointed out by Red below. So, that could be a source of confusion.
I will reserve my position on the Makarov because I haven't seen any firm evidence that the Makarov is actually around still. I have seen several photos put up by pro-Russian sources on Twitter, apparently of the Makarov in port, or some other location after the attack. But, those pictures have been easily identified as fakes. Hence, I will wait until there is actually firm evidence that the Makarov is actually still around before conceding anything.
If you are referring to the article linked to by Red Logix above, you obviously didn't read the part where it said:
"Satellite photos analysed by the Associated Press show the aftermath of an apparent Ukrainian drone strike on Friday on Russian positions on Snake Island, with thick black smoke rising overhead."
So maybe you need to update your technique for sorting fact from fiction.
tsmithfield the Russian frigate was and is nowhere near Snake Island, the source of another PR stunt gone wrong by Ukraine, remember the valiant soldiers who all actually surrendered to the Russians .. It is you that needs to update your technique for sorting fact from bullshit. You show a twitter feed as proof .. ha ha ha ha ha ha. If you want to actually educate yourself about what is happening in Ukraine I can give you some real independant analysis from actual experts, not armchair experts.
'Actual experts' who can tell us this 'so called 'war' is all just a Ukrainian PR stunt right? Real research would show Russian soldiers being welcomed with hot food, flowers and enthusiastic fucks by happy locals glad to be free of Nazis oppressing them.
Red Logix you need to drink less alcohol or inbibe less on substances before making comments which defy logic .. read your above post and get help friend!
If the ship has been damaged enough to require that sort of attention, then it could be out of the game for quite awhile, even if it is still floating.
Belladonna .. au contraire you need to provide actual proof of the frigate being damaged, I don't have to prove anything, because nothing happened except on a keyboard spewing propaganda and lies .. show me the money shot boys!
RedLogix .. come on Man pull yourself together, you simply don't make sense or offer an argument .. You say .. The Great Lord Putin has promised a wonderful victory over the hordes of lying Nazi monkeys pounding out endless lies and filth on their keyboards! Explain this nonsense?
An apolitical energy expert told me that solar is marginal in NZ but great in Australia. Aussie have a lot of sun when they need the most energy (in summer to run aircons). Whereas in NZ we need enrgy for winter heating and that's when there's too little sun.
Solar in NZ is good for water heating (which is a waste of electricity) but not so good for making electricity.
I have rooftop solar thermal hot water and photovoltaic panels and a battery so I speak from experience. There is a hybrid inverter that automatically sends surplus production to the grid and draws from the grid when the battery is at my reserve value. It can disconnect from the grid in an outage and provide power from the battery and reconnect in phase when the grid is back up. This is a Harrison's system and they have backed up their product with appropriate service. The cost is worth bearing for those who have the resources; our total electricity bill last year was little more than $300, and includes charging a Mitsubishi PHEV for local driving. I've long advocated for a government loan guarantee for such installations with savings on electricity applied to amortising the loan. This requires a suitable payback tariff for energy sent to the grid. This is not available from all electricity retailers and is not sufficient from others, but even then it works given some time. Other comments about large scale installations and upgraded distribution systems are correct and will be necessary for the progress of NZ into the rest of this century. Getting the government policies needed to accomplish this is an ongoing task.
Pete Buttigieg does a good job naming the "high water mark" of freedom within both the likely reversal of Roe and the Florida State "don't ask don't tell" law.
It's 6 minutes but he does a good job, noting his own point that 10 years ago it would have been laughable that he be able to discuss that he is married to a man and has two children, and that now such a statement is to be deemed only suitable for adults.
Yes, slay Buttigieg for that. Ponder his views and ways as illustrated in that 2019 link and that performance (above) on YouTube and the proven views and ways of Donald Trump. Which one of those two would have better qualities and less negatives to be President after 2024?
So it turns out that Omicron is just as severe as the previous Covid variants. It was all media bollocks from the business lobby to support opening up.
Interesting. That was the assumption that I made when I looked at those original studies on omicron.
They looked far too coarse grained for a population that was partially immunised and had treatments. Just simple bean counting without looking at nuance.
If you look closely at the NZ hospialisation demographic rates for unvaccinated where known (after the delta cases passed through), they look like Italy in early 2020.
Exactly. The continuous repetition of "more infectious but milder" smacked of an orchestrated campaign by business interests. It was never backed by the WHO.
Nope. The speculators and investors are unlikely to be hurt. Pretty much all of them have a healthy buffer of equity. And losses are only losses once you sell – so they're motivated to hang on to the property – for at least the 10 years required to escape the bright line test. Of course, in the meantime, they're also highly motivated to ratchet up the rent every year…
The people it clobbers are the new homeowners – with mortgages less than 3 years old. *If* they can hang on, they'll be OK. Banks have been stress-testing mortgage repayments at 7-8% over the last 2+ years before loaning money.
But anyone who is obliged to sell (marriage break up, illness, job loss, etc.) will take a hammering – and will probably come up with negative equity.
There will be some mortgagee sales – but everyone (banks included) wants to keep them to a minimum.
No. Banks very, very rarely require an infusion of equity for existing loans – where there is a strong payment history.
Unless you have some evidence that this past practice is about to change.
Of course, if you want a further loan (say for renovations) or want to shift to interest-only, then they'll force a revaluation.
But banks don't want to force a sale — they'll make a heck of a lot more money, long term, off the mortgage repayments.
You'd have to have property market crash of epic proportions for them to be moving into negative equity.
Property investors with portfolios older than 2 years – will have 'benefited' from the capital increase – and, again it would take an epic property crash to shift their loan into negative equity.
Highly leveraged property investors are pretty much a thing of the past in NZ.
Approximately 31% of mortgaged properties, or 47% of the value of outstanding loans, were found to be in negative equity at the end of 2010.[76]
As of September 2011, Central Bank figures show that 8.1% of private residential mortgage accounts are in arrears for more than 90 days – up from 7.2% at the end of June 2011.[77]
As of August 2012, more than 22% of Irish mortgages are in arrears or have been restructured.[78]
In the first 10 months of 2011, 8,692 houses were completed. This compares to 76,954 in 2004, 80,957 in 2005, 93,419 in 2006, 78,027 in 2007, 51,724 in 2008, 26,420 in 2009 and 14,602 in 2010.[79]
The Irish National Debt has significantly increased: Ireland's ratio of General Government Debt to GDP at the end of 2009 is estimated to have been 65.2%. The revised estimate for General Government Debt to GDP ratio at the end of 2010 is estimated to have been 92.5%. The forecast for General Government Debt to GDP ratio at the end of 2011 is estimated to be 105.5%.[79]
Finding it very curious that there have been numerous debates here on who is, should or can be a "woman". Over the last few days there has been much publicity about the nasty attack on Nadia Lim in the NBR by the Henry person. Pleasing to see all the support she has had from numerous people. But none or very little comment here!
The CEO Simon Henry is a misogynist, and has been outed.
Nadia is self made, but her business took advantage of shareholders and holes in the current system through pumping possible profits, selling shares and realising wealth where other investors won't get much.
So support for her position is muted, as the man is an egg, but his premise of overhyping the shares was real. imo.
Well I’m not going to get too excited about reality TV participants and their subsequent business activities–but Mr Henry deserves the shower of shit he is getting. He could have just stuck to his business grumble, without invoking misogyny and racial slurs.
“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.”
― Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Oh that were so in NZ! The reality is NZ is a venal money trench for the elite and petit bourgeoisie, a neo liberal state in legislation and reality, so no revolution just yet. But change is a coming…one way or another. Generation rent and student loan and alienated working class know that, it is a matter of what the direction is.
The Convoys and Groundswells had their go at being that change, but have ‘blown their bags’ to use an old crudity, as far as can be seen, they had their chance.
A new political movement (not just Parliamentary Party) is certainly needed to challenge and retire neo liberalism. But given all the requirements to register new parties and do community organising and activism, that should probably be kicked out to the 2026 General Election. There are ultimately few ‘organisational solutions to major political problems.’
But for 2023 certainly the Greens and Te Pāti Māori should be the target for pressure to support working class friendly policy in case they are able to form a Government with Labour. A combination of tactics–turn Green and Māori left as possible, and strategy–keep the dirty filthy natzos out, as the ground is prepared for a generational break through in 2026.
This country is a Tale of Two Cities and needs people power to turn it around, passivity and compliant consumers have had their day.
To Labour and the Scientists Thanks for a great fight against Mico plasma bovis. In spite of the refusal to comply by some rednecks, we are almost free of this scourge.
Next will be the tropical blackworm which is able to demolish a garden in days.
"Biosecurity New Zealand is closely monitoring reports of a Foot and Mouth disease (FMD) outbreak in Indonesia, says Biosecurity New Zealand Deputy Director-General Stuart Anderson."
"We will review the latest information from Indonesia and boost our already strong measures at the border if required.
"An audit last year of Indonesia's supply chain for palm kernel, which is used as a feed supplement in New Zealand, showed it was meeting strong import health requirements."
There is a Turning Away happening in the US – not the Floyd version, but arguably a response to it. When working no longer gets one anywhere, that old tune in, turn on, & drop out looks better every day.
Sad, sad thread on how people were and are treated like dust in Russia.
1/ The following thread is an attempt to explain Russia(TM) to you from my Soviet-Russian-speaking-Ukrainian-Jewish perspective. I didn't eat wisdom with spoons. Please add and correct!
2/ We are currently seeing many Russians on the streets of Russian cities in heroic protest against the war. Navalnyj said "If we have to clog up their prisons with our bodies, then we'll do it".
I ran across a recent essay from The Brothers Krynn, which attempts to map common horror monsters onto the Seven Deadly Sins: https://canadianculturecorner.substack.com/p/horror-monsters-and-vice My interest, however, is not in the meat of the piece, but rather the opening paragraph: It is an interesting fact that in recent decades, Vampires have ...
Buzz from the Beehive Transport Minister Simeon Brown dutifully issued advice to all road users to keep safe on our roads during the Easter weekend. He encouraged them to stay safe, plan their journeys ahead of time, and be patient with other drivers while travelling around this Easter long weekend. ...
Oliver Hartwich writes – New Zealanders recently learned about a new feature film. It will be about former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern – and taxpayers will subsidise it to the tune of NZ$800,000. Ardern had nothing personally to do with either the film or the subsidy. But her government’s ...
TL;DR: Here’s the top six news items of note in climate news for Aotearoa-NZ this week, and a discussion above that was recorded yesterday afternoon above between and The Kākā’s climate correspondent : An independent review panel into the emergency response to Cyclone Gabrielle in Hawkes Bayconcluded “that ...
There are now only a few days left to give feedback on the Draft Government Policy Statement (GPS) on Land Transport 2024-34 (see our earlier post this week on GPS submission guides). As we’ve reported, the GPS is a disaster for Local Government, so we were particularly interested to hear ...
Willis has pledged to go ahead with the debt-funded tax cuts, despite growing opposition from her own supporters worried about appearing fiscally irresponsible. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The five things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for ...
Open access notables A survey of interventions to actively conserve the frozen North, van Wijngaarden et al., Climatic Change:The frozen elements of the high North are thawing as the region warms much faster than the global mean. The dangers of sea level rise due to melting glacier ice, increased ...
Bryce Edwards writes – New Zealand’s biggest-ever political donations scandal is finally at an end. But what is the conclusion? No one can really be sure. The Court of Appeal released its judgement on Tuesday about the Serious Fraud Office case against the NZ First Foundation. On ...
In 2015, then-Prime Minister John Key announced plans for a huge ocean sanctuary around the Kermadec Islands, banning fishing and mining from 15% of Aotearoa's EEZ. It was bold, it was ambitious, and it suggested that National might actually care about the environment. Except they fucked it up: Key failed ...
1. Who has just been given the accolade New Zealander of the Year?a. The Kokakob. The Cook Strait Ferryc. Fair God. Dr Jim Salinger 2. Which of these is an affront to decent society?a. Dame Edna Everageb. Mrs Doubtfire c. Dr. Frank-N-Furterd. Brian 3. Who is Penny Simmonds?a. The aspiring actress in Big ...
New Zealand’s biggest-ever political donations scandal is finally at an end. But what is the conclusion? No one can really be sure.The Court of Appeal released its judgement on Tuesday about the Serious Fraud Office case against the NZ First Foundation. On the face of it, the court found ...
Buzz from the Beehive Waves of rain are set to lash much of the North Island during Easter Weekend as a low-pressure system forms east of New Zealand, according to a weather forecast published in the past day or so. Niwa was warning of a “moisture-laden” long weekend, with rain expected ...
Look around us…Nicola Willis’ promises of balancing the books, of cutting spending without reducing services, and of delivering game changing tax cuts are disappearing before her eyes.Everyday we see stories of violent crime ending in horrific injuries, or worse. The cost of living worsens, whereas the PM claimed renters would ...
TL;DR: My top six news of note on the morning of Thursday, March 28 include:The Government will have to borrow between $10 billion to $15 billion more than previously expected in order to make up for a slowing economy and to pay for $14.9 billion of tax cuts, according to ...
This story by Naveena Sadasivam and Kate Yoder was originally published by Grist and is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story. The long-awaited jobs board for the American Climate Corps, promised early in the Biden administration, will open next month, according to details shared exclusively ...
Should landlords be able to deduct the interest on the loans they take out to bankroll their property speculation? The US Senate Budget Committee and Bloomberg News don’t think this is a good idea, for reasons set out below. Regardless, our coalition government has been burning through a ton of ...
Treasury’s first report on the economy since the change of government presents a damning indictment of Labour’s economic management. The problem for National is that it is so damning that logically, coupled with a rapidly slowing economy, Finance Minister Nicola Willis should respond to it by postponing or even cancelling ...
Budget tensions are becoming evident within the Coalition Government. Winston Peters made numerous political points in his speech to the NZF annual conference. But the attack on his own government’s fiscal policies raised issues of substance. ‘Today in the Sunday Star Times, journalist and former advisor to the Labour ...
Buzz from the Beehive The media – sure enough – have been binging on Finance Minister Nicola Willis’ release of the Budget Policy Statement and a statement headed Government announces Budget priorities This assures us – or rather, this parrots the Luxon team mantra – that the Budget “will deliver ...
The Ides of March brought me COVID followed by a bereavement. No wonder they tell you to be careful of them.I’m home now and have resumed the interrupted recuperation. Very much looking forward to getting back to regular things. Meanwhile, some thoughts…OneThis new Prime Minister guy just keeps getting more dire. ...
News that the Chinese ATP 40 cyber-hacking unit penetrated parliamentary internet networks in 2021 has renewed concerns about the PRC’s malign intentions in Aotearoa. But is the hack that significant given the length of time that has passed since its … Continue reading → ...
When Parliament passed the Intelligence and security Act in 2017, they assured us all that it was full of safeguards. Any intrusive surveillance of New Zealanders would be subject to a "triple lock", requiring the approval of the Minister and (supposedly independent) Commissioner of Intelligence Warrants, as well as post-facto ...
Eric Crampton writes – Richard Harman’s Politik newsletter provides a bit of the context that ought to have been showing up in other media reports on potential reductions in public service staffing. Media has been reporting on staffing cuts on the order of about 7%. Is that ...
Mike Grimshaw writes – It’s becoming increasingly apparent that many perceive free speech to have become the preserve of the politically right wing, the religiously conservative, the libertarian fringe, the anti-trans, the anti-Māori and…. well, just fill in with whatever groups or individuals you don’t like and don’t ...
Don Brash writes – As everybody who is not blind and deaf is aware, there is a huge political preoccupation with climate change at the moment, a widespread (though by no means unanimous) belief that global temperatures are rising mainly as a result of the greenhouse gases created ...
TL;DR: My six things to note in Aotearoa’s political economy on Wednesday, March 27 include:Chris Bishop laid out his vision for filling Aotearoa-NZ’s $100 billion infrastructure deficit in a speech yesterday, emphasising user pays and private funding, but failed to say how to achieve bipartisanship on population, public borrowing and ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Former Finance Minister Grant Robertson and former Prime Minister Chris Hipkins have been conveying how unhappy they are with the tax system. Last week in his valedictory speech, Robertson called for the introduction of a wealth or capital gains tax. And this week Hipkins ...
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
Buzz from the Beehive China has loomed large in Beehive considerations over the past 24 hours, largely because of that country’s mischief-making in the cyber espionage department. Two media statements emerged on that subject hard on the heels of the PM baulking at questions put to him on RNZ’s Morning ...
Chris Trotter writes – WHY IS THE NATIONAL PARTY doing so much for landlords, property developers, trucking, and construction companies, and so little for everybody who isn’t already pretty well-off? It’s as if protecting landlords’ investments and building apartments and roads now constitute the whole of National’s ...
Bryce Edwards writes – When she was campaigning to be Minister of Finance last year, Nicola Willis pledged that she would resign from the job if she failed to deliver tax cuts in her first Budget. Now, it’s that pledge, along with Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s ...
Robert MacCulloch writes – The Reserve Bank has doubled staff numbers in five years to 510, with personnel costs rising to $80 million in 2023 from $32 million in 2018 – up by a whopping 150%. I guess when you print $50 billion and flood markets with liquidity, ...
The furore. In case you didn’t notice there was a controversy in the weekend involving dolphins in a little town off the South Island. Don’t panic, they haven’t declared independence and resumed whaling, this was simply a sailing event.The problem began when racing was cancelled on the opening day of ...
For 20 years or more, the case for a meaningful capital tax gains has been mulled over and analysed to death, including by the tax working group chaired by Sir Michael Cullen. More than once, the International Monetary Fund has said a CGT would be a good idea for New ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read: The Public Health Communications Centre (PHCC) call for urgent preventive action and a risk assessment survey of long covid in this briefing noteLocal scoop: NZ road deaths surpass OECD rates, so why is the govt reversing safety plans? ...
This story was originally published by Grist and is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story. This story is part of a collaboration with Grist and WABE to demystify the Georgia Public Service Commission, the small but powerful state-elected board that makes critical decisions about everything from raising ...
This is a guest post from Robert McLachlan Global warming is accelerating; 2023 was off the charts. We need to stop burning fossil fuels. In New Zealand, transport accounts for half of all fossil fuels burnt. In the Emissions Reduction Plan, transport emissions fall 41% by 2035. As the ...
Labour productivity has been receding rapidly over the past two years, reversing a post-lockdown rise. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: My six things to note in Aotearoa’s political economy as at 6:26am on Tuesday, March 26 include:Workers have been treading water in output per hour worked for 12 years, ...
TL;DR: The key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to April 2 include:Today, Parliament resumes sitting at 2pm for the second week of a two-week session. Officials for SIS and GCSB report their annual reviews in public to the Intelligence and Security Select Committee from 5.10pm.Tomorrow, ...
Faced with a barrage of criticism over the promised tax cuts from usually supportive commentators, Finance Minister Nicola Willis yesterday reaffirmed her intention to include them in this year’s Budget. The Government is up against it over the cuts just about every way it turns. Commentators like Fran O’Sullivan, Matthew ...
Here’s my pick of today’s substack posts as of 6:26pm on Monday, March 25: writes via his substack that Market-rate housing will make your city cheaper writes via his substack about the problems talking to double-cab ute (truck) drivers about their vehicles. today about moments of radicalisation in ...
Buzz from the Beehive Just before Christmas, Finance Minister Nicola Willis delivered something that was pitched as a mini-budget and brayed about the decisive action being taken to repair the Government books and support income tax relief in Budget 2024. In a statement headed Fiscal repair job underway. she introduced ...
My sister Belinda asked Dad yesterday what one word would describe Mum best. He said: vivacious.If you only knew her from the photos on the slideshow we've made for today,you might wonder about that, because the camera tended to lie with Mum.If ever she saw a camera pointed at her, she ...
There are two major public consultations closing in the next week, Auckland Council’s Long Term Plan (LTP), and the draft Government Policy Statement on Land Transport (GPS). Closing dates and times: LTP closes Thursday 28 February, at 11.59pm – a minute to midnight! GPS closes Tuesday 2 April, at 12pm noon – note that’s ...
From Kiwiblog’s David Farrar – Bryce Wilkinson writes: Senior Fellow Bryce Wilkinson’s analysis reveals that since March 2009, New Zealand has spent $158 billion more overseas than it has earned, but its NIIP has only fallen by $32 billion.Statistics New Zealand shows that receipts from overseas reinsurers have ...
Is she hinting that the Coalition Government will have to back down on key promises it made in Opposition? Brian Easton writes – The Minister of Finance, Nicola Willis, is telling an evolving story about her fiscal challenges. In Opposition she was confident that she could ...
Dear Nicola Willis,Right now you’ve probably got lots of competing demands coming at you. Ministers who’ve inherited quite a mess, or so you’ve told us, looking for money in the budget to improve things. I imagine that’s why they came to parliament - to make things better.You’ll have to make ...
The Local Government, Transport and Auckland Minister hasthreatened councils with intervention if they don’t merge water assets to take them off balance sheet, just as the now-repealed Three Waters plan directed. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: My six things of note this morning for Monday, March 25 include:Simeon ...
A listing of 36 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 17, 2024 thru Sat, March 23, 2024. Story of the week Thanks to John Mason having the stamina to sit down to watch "Climate - the Movie" ...
This morning the Q&A programme had Simeon Brown on to talk about National’s replacement for Three Waters. In case anyone’s forgotten the three are - drinking water, waste water, and sewerage. It’s quite important not to get them mixed up. In much the same way that you wouldn’t want to ...
Today’s newsletter comes with a mini-podcast conversation between me and my buddy Liv Tennet, talking about her time as a child actor in Lord of the Rings. It’s a conversation with a lot of giggles as she talks about falling off a horse, and becoming a meme. Read ...
The Desmog Climate Disinformation Database documents, "individuals and organisations that have helped to delay and distract the public and our elected leaders from taking needed action to reduce greenhouse gas pollution and fight global warming." It's a who's who of the organised climate change denial movement, in other words. In ...
Bob Edlin writes – A High Court judge has decided miscreants who have mana – or who claim to have mana – should be treated differently from miscreants who have none. It’s a ruling that suggests indigenous law-breakers have a better chance of securing a discharge without conviction ...
Welcome to the first, and possibly last, edition of Brickbats, Bouquets and Bull’s Wool. In which I’ll take a look at the events of the last week or so, and rate them.In such ratings the numbers usually have more to do with the opinions of the reviewer, than the actual ...
Roger Partridge writes – My earlier column this month, New Zealand’s highest court could be facing a turning point, prompted a flood of feedback from business readers and lawyers alike. A common query was what Parliament can do to restrain an overreaching judiciary. This week I discuss two steps Parliament ...
TL;DR: In today’s ‘six-stack’ of substacks at 6.16pm on Friday, March 22: writes about New Zealand's Building Boom—And What the World Must Learn From It over at his substack. challenges the Auckland Council’s use of a 3.8 degrees of warming forecast to oppose a wave-park and data centre project ...
Is she hinting that the Coalition Government will have to back down on key promises it made in Opposition?The Minister of Finance, Nicola Willis, is telling an evolving story about her fiscal challenges. In Opposition she was confident that she could deliver her promised income tax cuts. Appointed minister, she ...
Buzz from the Beehive Ministers of the Crown have drawn attention to one sector of the science sector which is unlikely to be subjected to heavy spending cuts, a state-funded broadcaster which is doing nicely, thank you, and a sporting event that had $5.4 million from the public purse puffed ...
Abbott’s Freestyle Libre sensors allow continuous glucose monitoring (CGM). The sensor is applied to the back of the patient’s arm, with a thin filament under the skin measuring glucose levels constantly. But it costs around $100 per sensor and must be replaced once every 14 days. Photo by BSIP/Universal Images ...
The Inspector General of Intelligence and Security (IGIS) recently released a report in which he exposes the existence of a foreign intelligence partner-controlled technological “capability” inside the headquarters of the GCSB, NZ’s 5 Eyes-affiliated signals intelligence collection and analysis agency. … Continue reading → ...
Peter Dunne writes – Nearly three decades after the introduction of MMP and multiparty governments there should be a greater level of understanding about their finer points than often appears to be the case. The reaction to the despicable outburst from the Deputy Prime Minister at the weekend highlights ...
The sweet kisses from fruit of summerHave slowly been turning dullerYou say, "those times"And "remember the daysWhen we went outside and there still was the shade?"Taking no reason into play…Autumn. Clear, blue days shortening to longer nights, growing colder. Aotearoa.That’s us. The temperature dropping, the looming car crash - so ...
Bryce Edwards writes – “It is often said that behind every great man is a great woman”. This is the pitch by the National Party Botany electorate branch to attend their “Ladies Afternoon Tea with Amanda Luxon”. For $110 including GST, you can turn up on Saturday 20 April ...
David Farrar writes – The Electoral Commission has published the expense returns for political parties for the 2023 election. I’ve put them in a table with how many votes a party got so we can see the spend per vote. National only spent $3.34 for every vote they got, almost ...
Winston Peters’ headline-making actions over the past week may have been a show of political power intended to strengthen his hand in Budget negotiations. It was no accident that his State of the Nation speech was as it was. He made it as New Zealand First Leader, not as Deputy ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The five things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for paying subscribers in the last week included:Former Labour Finance Minister Grant Robertson bowed out of politics this week, giving a series of exit ...
Graham Adams writes — If you love the law or sausages, as the saying goes, best not to look too closely at how they are made. And after watching the orgy of self-pity when Newshub’s closure was announced on February 28, television journalism should definitely be added to the list of those ...
Venerable New Zealand political commentator, Chris Trotter (https://bowalleyroad.blogspot.com/), is a sad creature these days. Once one of the most reliable Leftist writers out there – Economic Left at that – Trotter seems to have absorbed the worldview of Auckland culture-war obsessives. It is not for me to categorise what he ...
The Coalition Government’s plan to ‘get Auckland moving’ is a cuts cover-up that will ultimately cost Aucklanders more to move around the city, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
Slashing the Ministry of Pacific Peoples by 40% will have a devastating impact on pacific communities and further highlights how little this government cares about anything other than cutting taxes for the wealthiest few. ...
Labour has proposed an urgent inquiry to investigate the ever-increasing profits of supermarkets, aiming to lower costs for shoppers and food producers alike, says Labour Spokesperson for Commerce and Consumer Affairs Arena Williams and Primary Production Spokesperson Cushla Tangaere-Manuel. ...
With 14% of jobs on the line at the Ministry for Ethnic Communities, the responsible Minister Melissa Lee is failing to stand up for the very communities she’s meant to be representing. ...
COURT OF APPEAL: TRIFECTA OF VICTORY FOR NZ FIRST, TRIFECTA OF FAILURE FOR OPPONENTS For the third time since April 2020, New Zealand First has defeated the Serious Fraud Office and all those complicit in a malicious attack against a political party going about its lawful business in a lawful ...
The Green Party stands with people who live in public housing, people in dire housing need, experts and advocates in demanding better than the Government’s archaic approach to housing those who need our support the most. ...
New Zealand has recently lost the hosting rights of some major international sporting events including the America’s Cup, the Rugby Championship, Netball World Cup, and the Wellington Sevens. We are now at a huge risk of losing SailGP as well. And it won’t stop there. The recent issues with SailGP ...
A Member’s Bill drawn this week would modernise insurance law and make things fairer and more transparent for consumers, Christchurch Central MP Duncan Webb said. ...
The Minister for Disability Issues has confirmed she was aware of funding issues in mid-December and did nothing to stop it. On 14 March, she signed off on changes that were announced and implemented on 18 March without any consultation with disability communities. ...
Green Party MP Julie Anne Genter says her members' bill is an opportunity for the coalition government to plug the gap in electric vehicle incentives. ...
The National Government continues to talk about irresponsible tax cuts that will only drive up inflation, despite the country entering a technical recession. ...
The Minister for Disability Issues must act urgently to reinstate flexibility around the funding for disability support and apologise to disabled carers. ...
This story has been initiated by a leftie shill reporter who proactively sought to call a member of a former band, which disbanded twelve years ago, give their biased appraisal of what was said in my speech, and concocted a ham-fisted attempt at a story that does nothing but show ...
The Government has accepted Labour’s change to the Road User Charge (RUC) discount for hybrid vehicles, meaning there will still be some incentive for people to buy greener vehicles. ...
Many in the mainstream media have taken what was said in New Zealand First’s State of the Nation Speech in Palmerston North on Sunday and deliberately, deceitfully, and ignorantly misrepresented what I said and why I said it. The headlines and commentary on the news stated that I compared ‘co-governance ...
Kicking the most vulnerable people out of state housing and pushing them towards homelessness will result in a proliferation of poverty and trauma across our most vulnerable communities. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader and MP for Waiariki, Rawiri Waititi has penned a letter asking MPs to support his members bill to remove GST from all food. The bill is expected to go through its first reading in parliament this Wednesday. “I’m calling on all political parties to support my ...
Good afternoon. Thank you for, in your very busy lives, turning up to this meeting today. On October 14th last year New Zealanders overwhelmingly voted for change. That is exactly what this new government is bringing. New Zealand First campaigned to ‘take back our country’ and stop the disastrous economic ...
This year is about getting real with Kiwis and discussing the tough issues, as the National Government exacerbates inequality and divides New Zealand, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said ...
The Government adding Significant Natural Areas (SNAs) to its already roaring environmental policy bonfire is an assault on the future of wildlife that makes Aotearoa unique. ...
After 12 years of fighting to protect our moana we are finding ourselves back at square one and back at court. Today, the Environmental Protection Agency is sitting in Hawera to reconsider an application from Trans-Tasman Resources to dig up 50 million tonnes of the seabed in South Taranaki. This ...
Minister Shane Jones’ decision to step away from a seabed mining project is evidence of the murky waters surrounding the Government’s fast-track legislation. ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The Coalition Government’s miscalculation saga continues as it has forgotten an eyewatering $90 million gap in its interest deductibility cost figures, say Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds and Revenue Spokesperson Deborah Russell. ...
He Pou a Rangi Climate Change Commission has today released advice that says if the Government doesn’t act now New Zealand is at risk of not meeting its climate goals. ...
The Coalition Government has today confirmed it is abandoning first home buyers who are struggling to get ahead, says Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds. ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed the passing of legislation to move light electric vehicles (EVs) and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) into the road user charges system from 1 April. “It was always intended that EVs and PHEVs would be exempt from road user charges until they reached two ...
New Zealand is strengthening its ability to combat illegal fishing outside its domestic waters and beef up regulation for its own commercial fishers in international waters through a Bill which had its first reading in Parliament today. The Fisheries (International Fishing and Other Matters) Amendment Bill 2023 sets out stronger ...
Economists Carl Hansen and Professor Prasanna Gai have been appointed to the Reserve Bank Monetary Policy Committee, Finance Minister Nicola Willis announced today. The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) is the independent decision-making body that sets the Official Cash Rate which determines interest rates. Carl Hansen, the executive director of Capital ...
Apartment owners and buyers will soon have greater protections as further changes to the law on unit titles come into effect, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “The Unit Titles (Strengthening Body Corporate Governance and Other Matters) Amendment Act had already introduced some changes in December 2022 and May 2023, and ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters will travel to Egypt and Europe from this weekend. “This travel will focus on a range of New Zealand’s traditional diplomatic and security partnerships while enabling broad engagement on the urgent situation in Gaza,” Mr Peters says. Mr Peters will attend the NATO Foreign ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown is encouraging all road users to stay safe, plan their journeys ahead of time, and be patient with other drivers while travelling around this Easter long weekend. “Road safety is a responsibility we all share, and with increased traffic on our roads expected this Easter we ...
About 1.4 million New Zealanders will receive cost of living relief through increased government assistance from April 1 909,000 pensioners get a boost to Superannuation, including 5000 veterans 371,000 working-age beneficiaries will get higher payments 45,000 students will see an increase in their allowance Over a quarter of New Zealanders ...
Ensuring social housing is being provided to those with the greatest needs is front of mind as the Government restarts social housing tenancy reviews, Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka says. “Our relentless focus on building a strong economy is to ensure we can deliver better public services such as social ...
The Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary will not go ahead, with Cabinet deciding to stop work on the proposed reserve and remove the Bill that would have established it from Parliament’s order paper. “The Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary Bill would have created a 620,000 sq km economic no-go zone,” Oceans and Fisheries Minister ...
Dam safety regulations are being amended so that smaller dams won’t be subject to excessive compliance costs, Minister for Building and Construction Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on reducing costs and removing unnecessary red tape so we can get the economy back on track. “Dam safety regulations ...
The coalition Government is expanding the medium-scale adverse event classification to parts of the North Island as dry weather conditions persist, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced today. “I have made the decision to expand the medium-scale adverse event classification already in place for parts of the South Island to also cover the ...
The passing of legislation giving effect to coalition Government tax commitments has been welcomed by Finance Minister Nicola Willis. “The Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill will help place New Zealand on a more secure economic footing, improve outcomes for New Zealanders, and make our tax system ...
Science, Innovation and Technology Minister Judith Collins and Tertiary Education and Skills Minister Penny Simmonds today announced plans to transform our science and university sectors to boost the economy. Two advisory groups, chaired by Professor Sir Peter Gluckman, will advise the Government on how these sectors can play a greater ...
The Budget will deliver urgently-needed tax relief to hard-working New Zealanders while putting the government’s finances back on a sustainable track, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The Finance Minister made the comments at the release of the Budget Policy Statement setting out the Government’s Budget objectives. “The coalition Government intends ...
The coalition Government will look at options to address a zoning issue that limits how much financial support Queenstown residents can get for accommodation. Cabinet has agreed on a response to the Petitions Committee, which had recommended the geographic information MSD uses to determine how much accommodation supplement can be ...
Cabinet has agreed to a short extension to the final reporting timeframe for the Royal Commission into Abuse in Care from 28 March 2024 to 26 June 2024, Internal Affairs Minister Brooke van Velden says. “The Royal Commission wrote to me on 16 February 2024, requesting that I consider an ...
The coalition Government is delivering an $18 million boost to New Zealanders needing to travel for specialist health treatment, Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says. “These changes are long overdue – the National Travel Assistance (NTA) scheme saw its last increase to mileage and accommodation rates way back in 2009. ...
The Government is recognising the innovative and rising talent in New Zealand’s growing space sector, with the Prime Minister and Space Minister Judith Collins announcing the new Prime Minister’s Prizes for Space today. “New Zealand has a growing reputation as a high-value partner for space missions and research. I am ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has confirmed New Zealand’s concerns about cyber activity have been conveyed directly to the Chinese Government. “The Prime Minister and Minister Collins have expressed concerns today about malicious cyber activity, attributed to groups sponsored by the Chinese Government, targeting democratic institutions in both New ...
Independent Reviewers appointed for School Property Inquiry Education Minister Erica Stanford today announced the appointment of three independent reviewers to lead the Ministerial Inquiry into the Ministry of Education’s School Property Function. The Inquiry will be led by former Minister of Foreign Affairs Murray McCully. “There is a clear need ...
State Highway 1 across the Brynderwyns will be open for Easter weekend, with work currently underway to ensure the resilience of this critical route being paused for Easter Weekend to allow holiday makers to travel north, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Today I visited the Brynderwyn Hills construction site, where ...
Introduction Good morning to you all, and thanks for having me bright and early today. I am absolutely delighted to be the Minister for Infrastructure alongside the Minister of Housing and Resource Management Reform. I know the Prime Minister sees the three roles as closely connected and he wants me ...
New Zealand stands with the United Kingdom in its condemnation of People’s Republic of China (PRC) state-backed malicious cyber activity impacting its Electoral Commission and targeting Members of the UK Parliament. “The use of cyber-enabled espionage operations to interfere with democratic institutions and processes anywhere is unacceptable,” Minister Responsible for ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Defence Minister Judith Collins today announced New Zealand will provide logistics support for the upcoming Solomon Islands election. “We’re sending a team of New Zealand Defence Force personnel and two NH90 helicopters to provide logistics support for the election on 17 April, at the request ...
The European Union Free Trade Agreement Legislation Amendment Bill received Royal Assent today, completing the process for New Zealand’s ratification of its free trade agreement with the European Union. “I am pleased to announce that today, in a small ceremony at the Beehive, New Zealand notified the European Union ...
Public consultation on the terms of reference for the Royal Commission into COVID-19 Lessons has concluded, Internal Affairs Minister Hon Brooke van Velden says. “I have been advised that there were over 11,000 submissions made through the Royal Commission’s online consultation portal.” Expanding the scope of the Royal Commission of ...
Hardworking families are set to benefit from a new credit to help them meet their early childcare education (ECE) costs, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. From 1 July, parents and caregivers of young children will be supported to manage the rising cost of living with a partial reimbursement of their ...
A specialised Independent Technical Advisory Group (ITAG) tasked with preparing and publishing independent non-binding advice on the design of a "green" (sustainable finance) taxonomy rulebook is being established, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. “Comprising experts and market participants, the ITAG's primary goal is to deliver comprehensive recommendations to the ...
Defence Minister Judith Collins has thanked the Chief of Army, Major General John Boswell, DSD, for his service as he leaves the Army after 40 years. “I would like to thank Major General Boswell for his contribution to the Army and the wider New Zealand Defence Force, undertaking many different ...
25 March 2024 Minister to meet Australian counterparts and Manufacturing Industry Leaders Small Business, Manufacturing, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly will travel to Australia for a series of bi-lateral meetings and manufacturing visits. During the visit, Minister Bayly will meet with his Australian counterparts, Senator Tim Ayres, Ed ...
Government commits almost $3 million for period products in schools The Coalition Government has committed $2.9 million to ensure intermediate and secondary schools continue providing period products to those who need them, Minister of Education Erica Stanford announced today. “This is an issue of dignity and ensuring young women don’t ...
Good morning, it’s great to be here. First, I would like to acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of Building Surveyors and thank you for the opportunity to be here this morning. I would like to use this opportunity to outline the Government’s ambitious plan and what we hope to ...
Minister for Pacific Peoples Dr Shane Reti has announced the Government’s commitment to the Auckland Secondary Schools Māori and Pacific Islands Cultural Festival, more commonly known as Polyfest. “The Ministry for Pacific Peoples is a longtime supporter of Polyfest and, as it celebrates 49 years in 2024, I’m proud to ...
Before moving onto the substance of today’s address, I want to recognise the very significant and ongoing contribution the Breast Cancer Foundation makes to support the lives of New Zealand women and their families living with breast cancer. I very much enjoy working with you. I also want to recognise ...
New Zealand has notched up a first with the launch of University of Canterbury research to the International Space Station, Science, Innovation and Technology and Space Minister Judith Collins says. The hardware, developed by Dr Sarah Kessans, is designed to operate autonomously in orbit, allowing scientists on Earth to study ...
Introduction Thank you for inviting me to speak with you today and I’m sorry I can’t be there in person. Yesterday I started in Wellington for Breakfast TV, spoke to a property conference in Auckland, and finished the day speaking to local government in Christchurch, so it would have been ...
The Coalition Government is contributing more than $1 million to support the establishment of an emergency multi-agency coordination centre in Northland. Emergency Management and Recovery Minister Mark Mitchell announced the contribution today during a visit of the Whangārei site where the facility will be constructed. “Northland has faced a number ...
New Zealanders have enjoyed a broader range of voices telling the story of Aotearoa thanks to the creation of Whakaata Māori 20 years ago, says Māori Development Minister Tama Potaka. The minister spoke at a celebration marking the national indigenous media organisation’s 20th anniversary at their studio in Auckland on ...
Commercial catch limits for some fisheries have been increased following a review showing stocks are healthy and abundant, Ocean and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The changes, along with some other catch limit changes and management settings, begin coming into effect from 1 April 2024. "Regular biannual reviews of fish ...
COMMENTARY:By Ronny Kareni Since the atrocious footage of the suffering of an indigenous Papuan man reverberates in the heart of Puncak by the brute force of Indonesia’s army in early February, shocking tactics deployed by those in power to silence critics has been unfolding. Nowhere is this more evident ...
Analysis - Nicola Willis is holding firm on tax cuts despite the economic outlook being worse than forecast and critics urging her to wait, writes Peter Wilson for The Week In Politics. ...
Opposition MPs and unions are criticising a proposal by New Zealand’s Ministry of Pacific Peoples to cut staff by 40 percent. The country’s largest trade union — The Public Service Association — says the ministry has informed staff that it is looking to shed 63 of 156 positions. Opposition MPs ...
A poem by Poetry Aotearoa Yearbook 2024 featured poet Carin Smeaton. Daughtr of the 90s when she gets promoted to usherette a baby blu eel carries her all the way up to mothership she’s hovering high she lets the underaged in to see keanu reeves she lets the only lonely ...
Analysis by Keith Rankin. Keith Rankin, trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand. My earlier article – Can ‘Good’ be the Greater Evil? – looked at the issue of how wars should end, and how Good versus Evil ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 AMMA by Saraid de Silva (Moa Press, $38)A stunning debut novel reviewed by Brannavan ...
From Steve Martin to Ricky Stanicky, a pick’n’mix of things worth watching and listening to this long weekend. This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. If you’re at a loss for something to occupy yourself with this Easter, don’t panic: The Spinoff’s got ...
Jesus had dinner with his 12 disciples right before he died. Noted historian Madeleine Chapman finds out who really deserved to be there.First published in 2018 but let’s be honest, the subject is timeless. As you sit on your couch this Easter Sunday, eating a chocolate egg you know ...
The newly-promoted Northern League club is on a mission to return to the National League for the first time in two decades. Plenty about domestic football in New Zealand has changed in that time – but the sense that this amateur competition is not an entirely level playing field remains. ...
Comment: Every year on February 2, a dozen men in tuxedos and top hats approach the burrow of a groundhog in Gobbler’s Knob, Pennsylvania and entice the beaver-like rodent to emerge and predict the weather. If the groundhog, named Punxsutawney Phil, sees its own shadow when it is summoned, legend ...
Loading…(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){var ql=document.querySelectorAll('A[quiz],DIV[quiz],A[data-quiz],DIV[data-quiz]'); if(ql){if(ql.length){for(var k=0;k<ql.length;k++){ql[k].id='quiz-embed-'+k;ql[k].href="javascript:var i=document.getElementById('quiz-embed-"+k+"');try{qz.startQuiz(i)}catch(e){i.start=1;i.style.cursor='wait';i.style.opacity='0.5'};void(0);"}}};i['QP']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){(i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)})(window,document,'script','https://take.quiz-maker.com/3012/CDN/quiz-embed-v1.js','qp'); Got a good quiz question?Send Newsroom your questions. The post Newsroom daily quiz, Friday 29 March appeared first on Newsroom. ...
Auckland Council has put a deadline on new weather-impacted property owners applying for categorisation as government funding looks set to run out. Councillors have voted to support a deadline of September 30 for property owners who haven’t accessed support to come forward and engage with the council’s recovery office. It ...
NONFICTION 1 BBQ Economics by Liam Dann (Penguin Random House, $40) “It’s official,” wrote Dann nine days ago in the Herald, where he works as business editor at large, “we’re in recession.” Yeah, great. He delivered the bad stats: “GDP fell 0.1 percent in the December 2023 quarter, compared with ...
By Anneke Smith, RNZ News political reporter A petition urging the New Zealand government to provide urgent humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people has been tabled in the House. More than 200 people gathered on Parliament’s forecourt today and they were met by MPs from Labour, the Greens and Te ...
Pacific Media Watch The Paris-based global media freedom watchdog RSF (Reporters Without Borders) has appealed for information about the “disappearance” of Palestinian journalist Bayan Abusultan. She was reportedly last seen on March 19 among people “sequestered” in this week’s raid and siege of Al Shifa hospital by Israeli troops in ...
EDITORIAL:The Jakarta Post It happens again and again; indigenous Papuans fall victim to Indonesian soldiers. This time, we have photographic evidence for the brutality, with videos on social media showing a Papuan man being tortured by a group of plainclothes men alleged to be the Indonesian Military (TNI) members. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robyn J. Whitaker, Director of the Wesley Centre for Theology, Ethics, and Public Policy & Associate Professor, New Testament, Pilgrim Theological College, University of Divinity A strange and eclectic range of activities takes place across these few weeks of the year. Some ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Panizza Allmark, Professor Visual & Cultural Studies, Edith Cowan University It’s Easter weekend, which means many of us will be kicking back with the greatest hits on repeat. But whether you’re a boomer, or an ‘80s or ’90s kid, you might be ...
RNZ Pacific Fiji’s Acting Public Prosecutor has filed an appeal against the sentences of former prime minister Voreqe Bainimarama and suspended police chief Sitiveni Qiliho in their corruption case. Bainimarama was granted an absolute discharge for attempting to pervert the course of justice while Qiliho received a conditional discharge with ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Arosha Weerakoon, Senior Lecturer and General Dentist, School of Dentistry, The University of Queensland Casezy idea/Shutterstock How does toothpaste work? What did people use before toothpaste was invented? – Amelia, age 7, Meanjin (Brisbane) Thanks for your ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brett Hallam, Associate professor, UNSW Sydney IM Imagery/Shutterstock Solar SunShot is well named. The Australian government announced today it would plough A$1 billion into bringing back solar manufacturing to Australia, boosting energy security, swapping coal and gas jobs for those ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clare Dix, Research Fellow in Nutrition & Dietetics, The University of Queensland Easter is the time for chocolate. The shops are full of fantastically packaged and shiny chocolates in all shapes and sizes, making trips to the supermarket with children more challenging ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emma Felton, Adjunct Senior Researcher, University of South Australia Even in a stubborn cost-of-living crisis, it seems there’s one luxury most Australians won’t sacrifice – their daily cup of coffee. Coffee sales have largely remained stable, even as financial pressures have ...
Mining company Trans-Tasman Resources has unexpectedly withdrawn its application for a consent to suck the valuable metals vanadium and titanium from the Taranaki seafloor, as it apparently wagers on the Government’s new fast-track process. It had spent two-and-a-half days putting its case to the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision-making committee, at ...
Contrary to the Associate Minister of Education’s claims, analysis of Healthy School Lunches Programme - Ka Ora, Ka Ako assessments has revealed it provides excellent value for the taxpayer dollar, as a groundswell of public opposition to Government ...
Greenpeace says wannabe Taranaki seabed miner Trans-Tasman Resources is likely banking on Christopher Luxon’s fast-track process to side-step proper scrutiny of its Taranaki seabed mining proposal by bailing out of the Environmental Protection Agency hearing ...
Kiwis Against Seabed mining today slammed Australian owned would-be seabed miner Trans Tasman Resources (TTR) for abandoning its application to the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) to mine the seabed of the South Taranaki Bight. The company ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katie Attwell, Associate Professor, School of Social Sciences, The University of Western Australia Ground Picture/Shutterstock Months after COVID vaccines were introduced in 2021, governments and private organisations mandated them for various groups. Health and aged care workers were among the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Dzurak, Scientia Professor Andrew Dzurak, CEO and Founder of Diraq, UNSW Sydney Diraq For decades, the pursuit of quantum computing has struggled with the need for extremely low temperatures, mere fractions of a degree above absolute zero (0 Kelvin or ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne A national Essential poll, conducted March 20–24 from a sample of 1,150, gave the Coalition a 50–44 lead including undecided, a reversal ...
The Taxpayers’ Union has today made a formal request under the Regulations of the People’s Republic of China on Open Government Information () for information held about how New Zealand Members of Parliament are spending taxpayer ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert Nelson, Honorary Principal Fellow, The University of Melbourne A Byzantine depiction of the Eucharist in Saint Sophia Cathedral, Kyiv.Jacek555/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA A nasty quarrel arose in the 11th century over what kind of bread should be used in holy ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Patrick Hesp, Professor, Flinders University Patrick Hesp In some parts of Australia, coastal dunes are retreating from the ocean at an alarming rate, as waves carve up the beach and wind blows the sand inland. But coastal communities are largely ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Luke Heemsbergen, Senior Lecturer, Digital, Political, Media, Deakin University With an impressive 60% of the US smartphone market, Apple is undeniably big, but not a clear monopoly. Yet, years of innovation by Apple have effectively given the company its own exclusive ...
Whether you’re facing layoffs or are just an emotional junior staffer, it’s always a good idea to scout out a good crying place before you need it. It’s an incredibly hard time for Wellington. Across the city, thousands of public servants are hearing tough news about redundancies and layoffs. Government ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Miller-Jones, Professor, Curtin University Nuclear explosions on a neutron star feed its jets. Danielle Futselaar and Nathalie Degenaar, Anton Pannekoek Institute, University of Amsterdam, CC BY-SA How fast can a neutron star drive powerful jets into space? The answer, it ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Daryl Adair, Associate Professor of Sport Management, University of Technology Sydney Earlier this week, independent MP Andrew Wilkie accused the AFL of conducting “off the books” illicit drug testing to identify players using substances of abuse, then inappropriately withdrawing them from matches ...
The Government’s announcement that it will scrap plans for a vast marine sanctuary around the Kermadec Islands is ‘shameful’ and will make it impossible for Aotearoa New Zealand to meet its international commitments, says the World Wide Fund for Nature ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Quiggin, Professor, School of Economics, The University of Queensland Shutterstock The federal government has bowed to pressure from the car industry, announcing it will relax proposed emissions rules for utes and vans and delay enforcement of the new standards ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Suzanne Rutland, Professor Emerita, University of Sydney In his latest book, Jewish Life in Medieval Spain, Jonathan Ray focuses on the tumult of the 14th century in Spain – a time of the plague, civil strife and war between the two largest ...
While creating a slate of world-class shows, Whakaata Māori also developed a generation of world-class creatives. Television is an odd word. It mixes the Ancient Greek and Latin languages, and its most literal meaning is “far-off sight”. In the contemporary and living language of te reo Māori, “whakaata” as a ...
Yesterday the UN Security Council passed a resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in Israel’s war on Gaza. This significant step and the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza prompted an urgent debate in the New Zealand Parliament. Leader ...
The Government’s decision to reduce access to continuous glucose monitors (CGM) not only threatens the lives of children with type 1 diabetes and increases the potential for ‘Dead in Bed’ syndrome, but also threatens the health of their parents an ...
Apples are available year-round, but the wide variety on offer involves intensive scientific research – and large-scale commercialisation. What’s beautiful, red, sweet and crunchy? Tony Martin’s favourite kind of apple: Sassy. The CEO of apple and pear breeding organisation Prevar, Martin’s fondness for Sassy represents professional success as well as ...
Family violence specialist service Shine is calling on employers to stop asking for proof of domestic violence in order for employees to access domestic violence leave. The call comes five years after the introduction of the Domestic Violence ...
The Deputy Chairperson of the Finance and Expenditure Committee is calling for public submissions on the Budget Policy Statement 2024. The Budget Policy Statement 2024 (BPS) sets out the Government's priorities for the 2024 Budget. It explains the approach ...
Brutal government spending cuts that will see the size of the Ministry for Pacific Peoples slashed by 40% will hit Pasifika communities hard, the PSA says. The Ministry has told staff that it is seeking voluntary redundancies, and to redeploy and reassign ...
I live with five people I mostly love, but our different ideas about generosity are starting to really irk me.Want Hera’s help? Email your problem to helpme@thespinoff.co.nzDear Hera,This is a bit of a random one but here goes. I’m 22 and work an OK job (OK meaning I get paid ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Maria Nicholas, Senior Lecturer in Language and Literacy Education, Deakin University Earlier this month, the New South Wales government announced it would roll out programs for gifted students in every public school in the state. This comes amid concerns gifted school ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christopher Rudge, Law lecturer, University of Sydney Massachusetts General Hospital In a world first, we heard last week that US surgeons had transplanted a kidney from a gene-edited pig into a living human. News reports said the procedure was a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Tombs, Howard Paterson Chair of Theology and Public Issues, University of Otago The 5th-century Maskell panel showing Jesus in a loincloth.British Museum, CC BY-NC-SA When Jesus is shown on the cross, he is almost always depicted wearing a loincloth around ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Panizza Allmark, Professor Visual & Cultural Studies, Edith Cowan University Shutterstock When you think about a red object, you might picture a red carpet, or the massive ruby in the Queen’s crown. Indeed, Western monarchies and marketing from brands such ...
COMMENTARY:Jewish Voice for Peace The UN Security Council passed a resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza on Monday — and for the first time since the beginning of the Israeli military’s genocide of Palestinians, the United States abstained rather than vetoing it. Security Council resolutions are legally binding, ...
Asia Pacific Report A New Zealand investigative journalist and author says the US spy system hosted by the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) appears to be a controversial intelligence system used in global capture-kill operations. Writing a commentary for RNZ News today, Nicky Hager, author of Secret Power, a 1996 ...
While Nicola Willis wouldn’t give any details on its size, she said a package of tax cuts is definitely still coming in this year’s budget, writes Catherine McGregor in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. ...
The Taxpayers’ Union is welcoming the investigation into the Department of Internal Affairs after it was revealed that the Department’s Chief Executive personally reached out to expedite a DJs passport application. Taxpayers’ Union Campaigns ...
Finance minister Nicola Willis delivers her first budget statement, and unwittingly helps Joel MacManus save his relationship. Nicola Willis strode into the Beehive Theatrette. Around me, on the green foldout seats, were the country’s top business and political journalists. They were all here to see her announce the Budget Policy ...
Twenty years ago today, Māori Television launched after much controversy. Jamie Tahana looks back on its survival and impact across two decades. Chad Chambers stepped onto the stage, the brim of his cap casting a shadow across his face. His smile beamed as bright as his white freezing works gumboots, ...
Loading…(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){var ql=document.querySelectorAll('A[quiz],DIV[quiz],A[data-quiz],DIV[data-quiz]'); if(ql){if(ql.length){for(var k=0;k<ql.length;k++){ql[k].id='quiz-embed-'+k;ql[k].href="javascript:var i=document.getElementById('quiz-embed-"+k+"');try{qz.startQuiz(i)}catch(e){i.start=1;i.style.cursor='wait';i.style.opacity='0.5'};void(0);"}}};i['QP']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){(i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)})(window,document,'script','https://take.quiz-maker.com/3012/CDN/quiz-embed-v1.js','qp'); Got a good quiz question?Send Newsroom your questions. The post Newsroom daily quiz, Thursday 28 March appeared first on Newsroom. ...
A lengthy response to the recently released draft Government policy statement on transport will soon be delivered from Auckland Council to Minister of Transport Simeon Brown. A submission raising concerns about funding distribution and the plan’s treatment of Auckland passed through the council’s transport committee on Wednesday, despite some councillors ...
Something I have been wondering about for awhile that I would be interested in comments on.
Given the need for more renewable power to avoid using coal fired generators, along with the increasing pressure on the grid due to the influx of electric vehicles, it seems that the government urgently needs more renewable sources of energy.
Options such as building dams etc are incredibly expensive, environmentally damaging, and take many years to impliment.
Given those constraints, why doesn't the government introduce a scheme to heavily subsidise domestic solar power generation and storage? Especially for houses where that option would be effective.
This type of solution should be much faster to implement, and wouldn't have the environmental issues associated with other power generation options. Plus, it would also have the benefit of lowering power costs for consumers, and thus reduce their living costs. Imagine the impact on power generation if even say 30% of houses in NZ had solar panels and storage.
I believe there was some sort of subsidy scheme around solar a number of years back, but I don't think that is around anymore. But it seems like a sensible option given the costs of the alternatives. I just don't understand why it isn't happening already.
Minister Parker has in his drafting hand the ability to amend the new version of the RMA to specifically enable "renewable energy generation" in the text, rather than rely on the far weaker National Policy Statement on Renewable Energy Generation which TBF merely acts as a guide to local governments when evaluating such applications.
National policy statement for renewable electricity generation | Ministry for the Environment
My suspicion is that Minister Woods will not be shaken out of her torpor to amend the Electricity Authority to expand its remit into something useful, until there is a further major blackout from renewables as occurred last year.
Until then we have just two weeks until the Carbon plan is showered with billions from the new Fund. Your guess is as good any what that will achieve in the mitigation v adaptation game.
"There are no subsidies or incentives in New Zealand for homeowners to install solar power systems. The Government did provide subsidies for solar hot water systems for a few years, but that was never applied to solar power."
https://www.mysolarquotes.co.nz/about-solar-power/residential/how-much-does-a-solar-power-system-cost/#:~:text=Are%20There%20Subsidies%20For%20Solar,never%20applied%20to%20solar%20power.
I imagine there are a number of impediments, not least of which is the fact almost all of the materials will have to be imported….then there is capacity to install/maintain at the level you outline (30% of households = 600,000 units) and issues with grid stability.
It will be a slowly solved (if at all) problem I suspect, especially given we are likely returning to supporting our economy through population growth.
Yes, I realise that the solar subsidy solution is not going to be immediate. I was thinking 30% over 10 years or something like that.
But there would be incremental gains over that time that would hopefully coincide with incremental increases in electric cars in the national fleet.
I have submitted to the Queenstown Lakes District Council saying that it should be compulsory for all new buildings to install solar when they are built.
Better to get a solar and/or wind power system for the whole district. Keep in local ownership?
More energy and resource efficient, and cheaper per household.
Also has the advantage of removing profit taking power companies from the equation.
Or. Close Tiwai point!
Onshore windfarms tend to destroy landscape values.
Better to have offshore wind or solar farms…there are 900 solar farms in the pipeline in the UK and NZ announced a couple a few weeks ago.
I would have thought solar farms, or hydro dams, have a bigger footprint on the landscape than wind generators. Which of course still have a much smaller footprint than AGW.
Then there is tidal power. Ideal spot not far away.
Queenstown is about as far away from the ocean as you can get (unless you are suggesting the small tide that Lake Wakatipu has?). It's also very unsuitable for wind power for the immediate area, which would mean shifting electricity from Central or Northern Southland, and that starts to defeat the purpose.
Anyone know if grid tied solar or wind can be adapted to off grid if a quake takes out the grid connection?
Pretty easily.
It just requires a switch.
There is a safety issue, that you don't want the solar or wind powering up the grid supply part during a grid power cut. Not nice to get zapped when you expect the line to be dead.
Queenstown is not far from Fovoux Strait, power transmission wise.
I have recall of a tv item about a solar farm with the panels set high enough that the cattle or sheep could graze round them and use their shade in the summer. I don't recall the name of the programme. Someone else may have better recall.
Been going on for ages. https://solargrazing.org/what-is-solar-grazing/
Lucky sheeps. So many live their lives indoors or on feedlots.
Thanks Rosemary.
Windmills generate extreme noise levels and you cannot escape this, it also devalues any property close by.
This is for kids to discover alternative energy:
https://kidsdiscover.com/teacherresources/whats-good-whats-bad-wind-energy/
N.B.: There are large protests in Europe about the number of windmills planned as it also means that land is being made to concrete deserts. You might power your vehicle but you wont have anything to eat. (So to speak).
"Extreme noise levels"?
How Loud Is A Wind Turbine? | GE News
Rubbish!
In Makara, the sheep are louder.
You haven’t worked next door to Marsden point.
Then there are alternatives.
https://vortexbladeless.com/#:~:text=Vortex%20technology%20uses%20no%20blades,a%20greener%20on%2Dsite%20generation.
https://www.windenergy.org.nz/sound-noise-standards
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/08/210818130533.htm
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-97107-8
Recommendation is generally that residential housing should be 2 Km away. Low frequency noise can interfere with the health of people living close by. The effects are studied and we should not forget that we are not looking at a lot of time when data is collected.
I am all for alternative generation, but we don't need to but the baby out with the water. Calling concerns with a "swoosh" rubbish is not very constructive. I appreciate that you might have a firm point of view because it seems you were working close to Marsden point. Nonetheless, I stand by what I have written.
"it also means that land is being made to concrete deserts. You might power your vehicle but you wont have anything to eat. (So to speak)."
A dozen 15m diameter concrete footings within thousands of acres does not constitute a concrete desert and the fields were full of crops
I gave a link that showed you are repeating rubbish.
You even said it yourself. At 2 km you will not hear a wind generator over the ambient noise. Even in the countryside.
@KJT
Both solar and wind do have a real impact on their local environment – the sheer area of land involved cannot be so easily overlooked.
Go for a drive through the vast French countryside and you will see (but not hear) wind generators dotted all over the landscape…and no concrete in sight.
Pat, if you drive through the French countryside you should pick up a paper in the next town. You might read about the concerns of the folks that have to live near the turbines and farmers who lose arable land. Also, the blades need changing on occasions and give me a guess what happens with them? Yep, they are just deposited on the ground. How green is that!
I am all for Windmills but some reason and science has to apply. Unless you want to pay a gold bar for a kg of potatoes.
Windmills are anchored with steel and concrete.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-97107-8
…foundations are usually simple concrete blocks called footings that are placed under building walls and columns, or in the case of wind turbines, beneath the tower.
A typical slab foundation for a 1 MW turbine would be approximately 15 m diameter and 1.5 – 3.5 m deep. Turbines in the 1 to 2 MW range typically use 130 to 240 m3 of concrete for the foundation. Multi-pile foundations are used in weaker ground conditions and require less concrete.
The middle Waikato river produces 1450mW.
"A typical slab foundation for a 1 MW turbine would be approximately 15 m diameter".
To replace that with wind generators at 1 mW per 177m2 of land use per generator is 1450 x 177m2. 256650m2, Divide by 10 000 is how many hectares?
Total agricultural land area in New Zealand – Figure.NZ
I am not worried about space for wind generation, threatening my spud supply anytime soon.
@KJT
Your wind turbines are going to have a capacity factor of around maybe 20% in a good location. So you will need roughly 5 times more of them than your calculation suggests.
Then you need to consider that much of the land does not have a good wind potential or that some seasons can have weeks of low wind. Gets messy quickly.
Do the sums.
Still a miniscule fraction of NZ's arable land.
Let alone of total land area.
Compare to biofuels which does require significant land use.
And. A large proportion of the best wind locations are not suitable for housing or farming. Steep and windswept, are places we use for sheep, or gorse.
NZ on a global scale has a reasonably good wind resource and getting the current annual contribution from around 4% to say 20% seems feasible and desirable.
Although given much of the easy, high productivity sites have already been utilised – it will probably take a covering a bit more land than you would imagine to get us even to 20%. And that assumes there is never any growth in total demand into the future.
On a global scale the picture is even less rosy – but given how we have seen Greenies shut down perfectly good nuclear power plants so as to intentionally burn more brown coal – I guess anything is possible.
Obviously, arithmetic is not your strength.
They may but i suspect their solution will be more along the lines of large schemes (solar pumped hydro at Onslow?) implemented and controlled by the main sector players rather than individual set ups.
The time frames on fleet replacement may never come to fruition.
The Onslow project does look like it has potential Pat. But it is going to take time. With the lack if rainfall down South this year, we could really have done with this now:
https://www.mbie.govt.nz/building-and-energy/energy-and-natural-resources/low-emissions-economy/nz-battery/lake-onslow-option/
I recall that the Green Party used to have a plan to install Solar panels on schools to act as cores for community produced electricity (less line loss). But that isn't even in the online precis of their clean energy policy anymore. Though there is proposed solar support more in line with what was discussed upthread:
https://www.greens.org.nz/clean_energy_plan
I imagine that; social and community homes, means Kaianga Ora (HNZ). I didn't trawl through the full detail pdf to find out. It all comes down to postelection numbers next year anyway.
Though the GP have always been good with other parties swiping their ideas, so long as the ill gets cured.
The solar on schools (and businesses) is an interesting one…I have seen a number of reports on instances and the overwhelming theme is they only partially offset use….some at very low levels, which highlights KJTs point about economy of scale, not to mention the fact a few major players are easier to coordinate than 10s of thousands individual installations.
I guess the GP might have crunched the numbers and found that the cost benefit analysis didn't stack up. I think it was more Hughes who was pushing for it, so with him out of Parliament these days, it has languished a bit.
It was certainly an ambitious scheme. But if the government can mandate the abolishing of coal burners in schools, they can certainly make funding conditional upon schools allowing them to install solar panels and batteries on their grounds. Especially since the schools would have first call on the subsidized power thus produced.
Weka had a point (somewhere) upthread about the fragility of the lines system. Which is certainly true in Dunedin where decades of underfunding (to prevent rates increases) have left the grid in a woeful state. Having a more distributed network would give more systematic resilience.
Not sure about the boiler replacements either…..especially if replaced with biomass furnaces rather than electric.
https://impactful.ninja/the-carbon-footprint-of-biomass-energy/#:~:text=Biomass%20energy%20has%20the%20fourth,beneficial%20as%20it%20might%20seem.
Solar on schools, reduces the cost of outgoings for the school,produces good surpluses over holidays and weekends,and a surplus back to the grid for the peak use ,(during the spring to autumn period) where you can reduce daytime hydro flows.
As more uptake comes on stream,then surpluses can be banked into community batteries (which essentially become local peakers) and reduces the high cost of distribution.
A major cost in installing PV solar is that you really need to run it through batteries and inverties unless you want to fry your old electrical gear. Did that to a keyboard up in a commune about a decade back – never did get another with quite the same tone bank settings. Though the tech has probably improved these last few years.
Anyway, it is still likely more efficient for a medium size structure such as a school to aggregate and distribute the local solar electricity network with good sized battery banks and true sine-wave inversions (rather than many budget setups with modified square-wave).
Excess could be shunted off to the grid more easily than with multiple small connections from individual houses. And likely get bulk discount on buyback to make that work out better too. Sure, maybe not as technically efficient as larger projects, but also avoiding lots of line-loss. More of an intermediate step.
Though Pandemic supply lines to this country might be too stretched to make this viable at present. Plus no one really seems to be advocating for it anymore.
Community batteries store the excess generation locally when households are at work etc.They return to the local grid for the peak flows .This reduces the need for local network upgrades,transmission loss etc.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2022-04-05/battery-solar-energy-storage-community-neighbourhood-home/100128416
Thanks for the link there Poisson. I should have said so yesterday, but got busy with other things after I clicked away.
The good thing about schools as a site – is that you have unused solar being contributed to the grid 2/7 and during school holidays.
There's a lot of unbuilt wind farms in Southland (you could say Southland is the Saudi Arabia of wind), that haven't been built because there's nothing apart from more coal to provide backup on the rare day's it's not blowing it's tits of along the south coast.
Onslow and / or the Tiwai hydrogen proposal will get those wind proposals going and I suspect a lot more. Could be an interesting period coming up for the South with the Green Hydrogen development leading to a dramatic expansion of the region's industrial sector.
Perhaps it could be a requirement for all owners of EVs (license address) to demonstrate that they have solar power installed 😉
After all – if you can afford 70K or so to buy one – then you can easily afford the solar installation to power it.
[Yes, a bit tongue-in-cheek]
That is a useful site Pat…thanks for the link. We've flirted with the idea of a hybrid system with battery back up for our wee place here in the Far North, but have been disappointed with the detail provided from the couple of 'quotes' we've had. $30,000 or a 5kw system…no idea of how many panels, batteries, brands etc. Most seem to be tied into some kind arrangement with a particular electricity retailer. The 'we're not sure if there will be over runs on installation until we start…' proviso, in small print at the bottom of the quote leaves me more than a little nervous. I did purchase a generator to keep freezers and our pumps running and have an 'ups' thingy as back up for the phone an internet.
And an update on this major solar power project… you'll be pleased to know that the crop of maize grown on this site was harvested a month or so ago, so I guess there has been solar energy utilized. Other than a sign and a chunky gravel carpark the sod-turning photo- op is as far as its gone.
Lol…enjoyed the maize anecdote.
I think individual solar good IF you can develop a system for your own use AND have some form of storage but despite the sales pitch the commercially available set ups still require considerable outlay and pay back periods are extensive….the costs increase considerably the moment it is grid tied.
Personally I would like to try to build a battery based system using DC only. Feed that with AC and covert to DC appliances at various voltage/amp. Almost everything i use is DC in their internal reality. Computers monitors, TVs, power tools, fans,
The exception appears to be heat generators like ovens, stove tops, heater, hot water…
Inverters are a waste of power. So are most of electric AC to DC adapters.
Then once that is running – look at alternate power supplies to feed DC batteries. Pointless having alternate power sources ifbyou are going to have major inefficiences in converting DC to AC to DC to charge a phone (for instance).
I wouldn’t bother feeding the grid when I had excess. The rates are pitiful against the equipment costs to do that. I would need the grid to get the electric ecosystem setup, and as a supplement.
One day when I feel like retiring.
Yes but most dont have the ability to create a bespoke system for themselves….and the moment you tie to the grid you are bound to use approved (and consequently) more expensive componentry, not to mention various fees.
A 12v system is common in many home designed systems often tied to 12v appliances.
I am grid tied (although the inverter is hybrid so are future proofed) the return on investment for me is 12% net,not many investments like that,
What are specs of system and who is providore?
Inverter here (on suppliers site)
https://cpssolar.co.nz/solar-product/goodwe-eh-series-grid-tie-hybrid-inverter/
Panels here.
https://cpssolar.co.nz/solar-product/trina-solar-panels/
Christchurch based.
kw and provider recompense?
So maximum 6kw….a 12 % return better than most….through which power co?….more than 0,08 (+ gst) an excess kw?
excess power 12c + genesis. My daily usage is around 11kwh.
What size system?…and 12c up to 50 kw (per billing period ?)
Gensis homegen is for solar or wind up to 50kw (output) best buyback price.
my unit is 5kw,getting around 4kw due to sun angle between the equinox's.Even on a cloudy day,i usually receive more then I use.
battery or not?
Hybrid so future proof ( can add battery later) as battery efficiency increases.
what (roughly) location?
43 south (chch)
How long you been running?
Since last year
Those who want individual households to install solar power, are ignoring efficiencies and economics of scale..
Individual small solar installations are many times more expensive and require more manufactured resources, than a large solar or wind installation.
Government money is better used in building larger scale sustainable generation, for everyone instead of subsidising upper middle class who can afford to add solar panels.
While we have a privatised electricity industry whose business model depends on keeping energy scarce and expensive, though!
The economics of roof solar have changed dramatically over the last few years. Two minutes of surfing showed this:
"Costs for solar energy systems have come down substantially over the past decade. A fully-installed system in 2008 could run you about $40,000 — now, prices are only a fraction of that amount. The cost for a solar system starts around $5,990."
Think for a moment about what those households could buy for that amount, if several thousand of them clubbed together and built a solar or wind farm.
Not to mention the savings on long term maintainance, of one solar farm compared to hundreds of individual roof top systems.
There's no reason that large scale solar farm can't be virtual and spread over a hundred or thousand roof tops.
That's what Solar Zero have done, but their model is putting their panels on your roof, and giving you cheaper (maybe) power in lieu of rent.
I'd be interested in a more co-operative model where the property owner owns the panels and shares in a wholesale marketing organisation to sell their surplus energy
Every one of those roof tops requires rectifiers, switching and controllers, plus probably batteries.
A lot of duplication of small and consequently, inefficient, equipment.
On the plus side, roof top solar doesn’t take up extra land.
Hopefully solar control systems will improve in cost and efficiency.
"There's no reason that large scale solar farm can't be virtual and spread over a hundred or thousand roof tops."
Its not impossible but is it the best and most efficient use of limited resources both now and for the future?
I agree, it makes more sense from an efficiency point of view to build large solar arrays. I have seen these type of installations in Germany.
A counter to that is that such installations would take a long time to go through the approval process, actually get built, and have supporting infrastructure built. Also, they use up huge amounts of land. In that respect, is the offset cost of the lost opportunity cost of alternative usages for the land taken up by solar arrays. For instance, lost opportunities for food production, or even using the land for planting native forests as a carbon-offset.
While subsidies for domestic solar installations would not be as efficient, they would provide much quicker sources of renewable energy and wouldn't need the same amount of supporting infrastructure as they would be using the infrastructure already in existence.
Perhaps, a solar subsidy arrangement could be an interim goal to fill the gap while more efficient solutions are implemented over a longer timeframe.
Yes I agree with your thoughts above and have done so for at least 20 years! I worked in the solar hot water side for awhile – before PV became more viable – and even then there were immense gains to be made both economically and environmentally. WA had a similar scheme – sunny days are the rule there, so an obvious source of energy. Traveling in the train south from Perth you will see house after house with solar panels. It was so popular that the WA Govt overran its budget and, as it was then a liberal govt, cut the scheme. But the die had been cast and there is still a good uptake on solar energy installation on new builds.
Many of the solar hot water systems installed in NZ are manufactured in WA – it was there that they were developed.
Israel mandates all new buildings to be fitted with solar energy and has done for decades, obviously to reduce its reliance on imported fossil fuels.
Yes you are correct in that roof-top solar has far more penetration in Australia than NZ. As a guess I would say the rate is between 5 – 8 times higher.
Still the reality is that Australia has one of the best solar and wind power potential anywhere on the planet – and it is still a non-trivial task to turn off all the coal until you have solved the storage problem.
The large uptake of solar in oz,has meant electricity prices have fallen,
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-01-19/how-low-electricity-prices-can-help-with-power-bills/100703726
Roof-top solar appears to have a few fishhooks.
Last year saw Australians install rooftop solar like never before, with 40% more installed in 2021 than in 2020. Solar system installations now make up 7% of the energy going into the national electricity grid.
[…]
But such a dramatic surge in solar output also poses challenges for Australia’s power system for two main reasons.
It results in increased periods of large oversupply when weather conditions favour solar energy. This leads to energy being wasted due to the need for solar curtailment – when a solar system shuts down or stops exporting energy to the grid to counter the energy spike.
On the other hand, there is little solar generation during peak demand hours in the morning and evening. This requires more expensive generators to run.
These are huge problems from a market operations perspective, as the pressure on the system may result in blackouts and disruptions. It also creates large price swings for retailers, which then can increase costs for consumers. As a result, we may see it become more expensive to decarbonise the national energy market.
https://theconversation.com/4-ways-to-stop-australias-surge-in-rooftop-solar-from-destabilising-electricity-prices-173592
I came up with a hair brained scheme a while back where government rolls out solar that pays for itself.
Put solar on state housing and recoup the costs from tenants paying their power bills – but at the same time (calculated by their average/historic use) offer them some of the savings (will make buy in much easier) from the savings generated. Win – Win.
You could roll out a portion of it, show the bank the payments coming in, and get finance for the next portion. Very little govt spending required if they shuffle their cards right.
Many other government properties could do with the retrofit too.
It would make the government a major power generator in short order. And yes, it would certainly help take the pressure off our systems.
there was talk some time back of us manufacturing solar here. I have no idea why that's not happening, it was another no-brainer.
"there was talk some time back of us manufacturing solar here. I have no idea why that's not happening, it was another no-brainer."
The simple answer is costs….most of the components would need to be imported anyway so is more efficient to buy in complete items.
Here's what the sustainable and resilient solution looks like, see if you can spot the pattern:
What that does is use less resources, require less maintanence, create less pollution, make NZ more self sufficient, make local areas, neighbourhoods and households more self sufficient and resilient going into our climate and quake future.
outside my lane about what would work, but couple that with manufacturing components in NZ as much as possible.
At the moment, we have some pretty important infrastructure that relies on overseas manufacturers for replacement parts. Consider current supply line interruptions magnified, and what would happen if your town electricity or supply stopped working because something broke. How much redundancy do we have?
I can't say I disagree with any of that Weka. It just seems to make more sense compared to anything else which will be expensive, long to implement, and damaging to the environment.
I imagine such a solution would also have good buy-in from the public who would directly benefit from such a concept.
You dont need the water part,there is an extra unit that you can install with solar pv which optimizes Water heating first (around 800)
It's a good question that some of us have been asking for a while now. Would have to look up exactly when, but the Greens pushed quite some time ago (pre Key?) for solar install subsidies that would also have had the effect of upscaling solar business in NZ and thus lowering prices. You can understand why some of us are frustrated with NZ voters.
Further to my comment, probably the only point I would disagree with is that I don't think that the government should be subsidising or requiring (in the case of new builds) every house should have solar energy. That is because not all houses are oriented to efficiently take advantage of solar.
The optimal orientation is east-west oriented houses (with the exposed roof facing north). So, perhaps at the consenting side of the equation the approval authority could decide whether the orientation of the house qualifies for the government subsidy or not so that taxpayer money is used in the most efficiently.
Perhaps planners should look at the possible orientation of houses when allowing for new subdivisions.
Ha! Have you seen the new builds in Auckland. 8 townhouses crammed literally side-by-side on a section which previously contained 1 house.
Sections are covered to 95% of area with housing (and the rest is driveway).
Under the new government intensive building plans – town planners will have little if any control over what is built where.
I call BS on that. The building coverage in Auckland cannot exceed 50% of the site and in most cases (e.g. zones) it is less than that.
Really. I invite you to take a look at the intensive housing going in along the main transit corridors (but still suburban streets) in Auckland.
Literally 4 doors down from me (side street connection to a main road) they are building 8 townhouses on the site where they've removed one house. They're 3 story – in order to get the most density on the site possible.
And the building is right from one boundary to the driveway (which is on the other boundary)
The only non-built space is the driveway.
This may have required a resource consent (i.e. isn't a normally allowed activity) – but they are routinely being rubber-stamped in Auckland's drive for intensification along PT corridors (and linked areas).
This is repeated on building-site after building-site across the suburbs I drive through.
Yes, really. Knock yourself out by searching the AUP (Auckland Unitary Plan) for “building coverage” aka building footprint. For example, here:
https://www.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/plans-projects-policies-reports-bylaws/our-plans-strategies/hgi-district-plan/Documents%20%20PM14/pm14-attachment-e-aup-tracked-changes-part1.pdf [625 pages]
For example, 50% max. building coverage on a site of 10 m by 20 m (200 meter squared) means the building footprint cannot be more than 100 meter squared, e.g. 6 m by 16 m (96 meter squared). To you that may look like 95% while in actual fact it is (only) 48%. (NB there are all sorts of boundary requirements, but this is just a simple example to illustrate your optical illusion)
Have fun!
In the real world: Building from one side of the site to the other (excluding the driveway), building from front berm to to back boundary.
I don't see in what rational world that can be described as 48% of the site.
I acknowledge that this may have required a resource consent for an exemption to the standard rules. However, as I said, these are clearly being routinely granted.
What I'm describing is anything but an isolated incident.
And the new legislation is specifically designed to allow 3x3story houses on the site where previously 1 was permitted.
Go argue with your calculator and work out the building footprint after you have measured yourself those sites with new housing builds (incl. terraced houses and apartments) that, in your mind, occupy 95% of the total site area. You may want to ask permission before you enter those properties. Alternatively, you could tell us the exact area you’re talking about; Auckland Council has these very handy maps and other handy data …
What you think you see in the real world is in your head.
Spot the ambiguity if not contradiction.
What does this have to do with building footprint maxima?
The new law requires Auckland Council to allow medium-density housing (3 houses of 3 stories high on the site currently required for one) – as a default across most of their area.
https://www.hud.govt.nz/about-us/news/update-enabling-housing-supply-legislation-passes-to-help-grow-our-cities/
I expect this drive for intensification to continue. And the cheapest way for developers to do this, is what they're already doing: cramming as many townhouses as possible on a single site.
From your link:
In other words, it has not happened yet (“from August 2022”), so you cannot have seen it yet, whatever it is that you think you saw.
No. What I'm seeing is resource consent variations over site-coverage being routinely granted to enable Auckland Council’s goals of intensification along PT corridors.
The point I was making is that this intensification (resulting in virtually zero un-built-on land on the site) will increase (and become more widespread) when the new legislation comes into effect.
At least you agree that the new legislation has not yet come into effect. Now, can you tell us what the building coverage limits are that are allegedly “resulting in virtually zero un-built-on land on the site” in the new legislation, which by your reckons is already happening in Auckland? You’re repeating the same stupid line but with not a shred of support.
Even with the 3 levels,both the height control plane and expense will exclude lifts.
It should be mandatory for Woods and Brownlee to move the new owners fridge and washing machine up to level 3.
They manage moving to the 4th floor in the middle of Amsterdam just fine.
Well they should move to Amsterdam.
I’m sure NZ movers would love a trip to Amsterdam to learn the trade.
Na they would send the container with Brownlee and Woods in there.
Anyway the infill initiative falls over under high initial costs (land and property,high construction costs,and high interest rates to come.
Brownlee is very good at tampering with airport security and he’d get out of the container quite easily.
They were not economical then,its only in the last 3-4 years that costs have decreased substantially as large scale manufacturing became more cost effective.
Private solar installations are already subsidised in a roundabout way. My son who has a PhD in Battery Technology countered my arguments about more house solar and why werent the prices paid for supply to the grid closer to what we pay. The reply was that there are a few unique aspects to NZs electricity systems, and the cost of production of is only about 7cents a kw, the distribution is the killer.
1, most of the rest of the world needs electricity to cool buildings in the summer when solar and wind is a lot more efficient, US and Europe heat their houses and factories with gas or oil and it will take quite sometime to phase out up to a billion systems. We on the other hand use electricity for heating in the winter and don't cool very many buildings in summer, our winter solution is to put on another bloody jersey, one area where our Scots and Irish heritage favours conservation!
2, the majority of the cost of electricity is in the distribution, and NZ is very difficult terrain to manage. I live 25kms from a large SI town yet between here and there there are tens of millions of dollars of installations, a lot disquised as normal houses used to manage voltage and other aspects, all of which require a huge amount of maintenance, again an almost unique NZ problem, because of the long distances and consequently a fraction of the consumers to pay for it compared to other countries.
Heres the political problem, more houses with solar means less consumers to pay for the distribution costs and that system is vital, small private solar installations are very prone to lack of sunlight and wind just when you need the power hence the need for most to be connected to the grid and the nessecity to pay the same as someone without solar supplementation. Just because you may ride a bike a lot of the time you still may need a car to do what cannot be managed on a bike and I'm pretty sure no government is going to subsidise the capital cost of a car for you just because it sits idle until you need it.
There are many, many other complications, but one of his interesting comments was that the future will see that a much larger proportion of the worlds industrial production will occur 10-20 degrees either side of the Equator in highly automated factories with few staff because of the amount of sunlight available ( closer to the sun ) and the reliability of tropical winds for cheaper energy and shorter freight distances, ( not by much but everything helps ).
Get in now, buy desert in northern Australia.
Hey tsmithfield, do you want to walk back the lying propaganda you posted yesterday about another Russian ship being sunk? No evidence whatsoever except the lies you picked up from Western media. It didn't happen, just like the Russian Generals killed in action .. all bullshit .. You really need to learn how to do real research.
Poots' billion dollar gin palace will do.
https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/putins-superyacht-scheherazade-seized-italy/
Consolation prize
Yes – the whole invasion is a Nazi fake. Real research would show that Putin was correct all along when he told everyone back in Feb that Russia was never going to invade Ukraine.
Thought you may be interested in this RL.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/experiences/hiking-holidays/128541226/on-long-and-winding-trail-of-a-tramping-legend
Thanks for this. I met Paul just the once at Masterton Rail station on his way into the Tararuas and got to chat with him for a while. Yes he is a legend – quite well known.
Great article!
Positively inspiring.
I know for certain they took out a landing craft type boat as pointed out by Red below. So, that could be a source of confusion.
I will reserve my position on the Makarov because I haven't seen any firm evidence that the Makarov is actually around still. I have seen several photos put up by pro-Russian sources on Twitter, apparently of the Makarov in port, or some other location after the attack. But, those pictures have been easily identified as fakes. Hence, I will wait until there is actually firm evidence that the Makarov is actually still around before conceding anything.
tsmithfield .. The clip of the ship being hit is actually from a video game, wise up with your comments, you are spreading lies ..
If you are referring to the article linked to by Red Logix above, you obviously didn't read the part where it said:
"Satellite photos analysed by the Associated Press show the aftermath of an apparent Ukrainian drone strike on Friday on Russian positions on Snake Island, with thick black smoke rising overhead."
So maybe you need to update your technique for sorting fact from fiction.
tsmithfield the Russian frigate was and is nowhere near Snake Island, the source of another PR stunt gone wrong by Ukraine, remember the valiant soldiers who all actually surrendered to the Russians .. It is you that needs to update your technique for sorting fact from bullshit. You show a twitter feed as proof .. ha ha ha ha ha ha. If you want to actually educate yourself about what is happening in Ukraine I can give you some real independant analysis from actual experts, not armchair experts.
'Actual experts' who can tell us this 'so called 'war' is all just a Ukrainian PR stunt right? Real research would show Russian soldiers being welcomed with hot food, flowers and enthusiastic fucks by happy locals glad to be free of Nazis oppressing them.
Got it.
Red Logix you need to drink less alcohol or inbibe less on substances before making comments which defy logic .. read your above post and get help friend!
Выпить Карцу Путину !!!
RedLogix, I examined your letters and again you confirm the need for some assistance man, you lack logic or good sense, grow up!
The situation with the Makarov is a bit weird. Hopefully we will soon have some objective information about this.
There has been this tweet recently claiming that the ship was met back at dock by 20 ambulances suggesting something serious had happened on board.
If the ship has been damaged enough to require that sort of attention, then it could be out of the game for quite awhile, even if it is still floating.
It's been very widely reported in the media.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/russia-ukraine-war-putins-new-flagship-warship-on-fire-following-missile-strike-weeks-after-moskva-sunk/WH3QTI2QHZCJMO7RRANWDD2EHI/
Of course the Herald report comes from the International wires – rather than independent reporting.
If you have a reputable source to link to, that this is propaganda – then it would be good to see it.
Belladonna .. au contraire you need to provide actual proof of the frigate being damaged, I don't have to prove anything, because nothing happened except on a keyboard spewing propaganda and lies .. show me the money shot boys!
The Great Lord Putin has promised a wonderful victory over the hordes of lying Nazi monkeys pounding out endless lies and filth on their keyboards!!
RedLogix .. come on Man pull yourself together, you simply don't make sense or offer an argument .. You say .. The Great Lord Putin has promised a wonderful victory over the hordes of lying Nazi monkeys pounding out endless lies and filth on their keyboards! Explain this nonsense?
An apolitical energy expert told me that solar is marginal in NZ but great in Australia. Aussie have a lot of sun when they need the most energy (in summer to run aircons). Whereas in NZ we need enrgy for winter heating and that's when there's too little sun.
Solar in NZ is good for water heating (which is a waste of electricity) but not so good for making electricity.
Fuck the ' experts ' works perfectly fine on my roof and has done the last ten years .
Worked for my parents in Rotorua for a decade. Their grid power bills were minimal – about $30 per month in winter. Solar + water backed wood burner.
They moved about 5-6 years ago. I'd have liked to have tried lithium batteries as well. But they were too expensive at the time.
Worked for my parents in Rotorua for a decade. Their grid power bills were minimal – about $30 per month in winter. Solar + water backed wood burner.
They moved about 5-6 years ago. I'd have liked to have tried lithium batteries as well. But they were too expensive at the time.
I have rooftop solar thermal hot water and photovoltaic panels and a battery so I speak from experience. There is a hybrid inverter that automatically sends surplus production to the grid and draws from the grid when the battery is at my reserve value. It can disconnect from the grid in an outage and provide power from the battery and reconnect in phase when the grid is back up. This is a Harrison's system and they have backed up their product with appropriate service. The cost is worth bearing for those who have the resources; our total electricity bill last year was little more than $300, and includes charging a Mitsubishi PHEV for local driving. I've long advocated for a government loan guarantee for such installations with savings on electricity applied to amortising the loan. This requires a suitable payback tariff for energy sent to the grid. This is not available from all electricity retailers and is not sufficient from others, but even then it works given some time. Other comments about large scale installations and upgraded distribution systems are correct and will be necessary for the progress of NZ into the rest of this century. Getting the government policies needed to accomplish this is an ongoing task.
Pete Buttigieg does a good job naming the "high water mark" of freedom within both the likely reversal of Roe and the Florida State "don't ask don't tell" law.
It's 6 minutes but he does a good job, noting his own point that 10 years ago it would have been laughable that he be able to discuss that he is married to a man and has two children, and that now such a statement is to be deemed only suitable for adults.
(8) Pete Buttigieg BRINGS THE HOUSE DOWN with must-see speech – YouTube
Excellent link thanks Ad. A big part of why I come here is to be put on to links like this.
Throws more light on something I've thought for some time. That the USA is broken and I consider is incapable of healing itself.
I find the concept of a high-water mark useful.
Next week Pete might have changed his opinion. 🙂
He is the last person to be speaking about freedom when he doesn’t seem to know what it means.
https://www.indystar.com/story/news/politics/elections/2019/05/01/pete-buttigieg-vaccines/3639678002/
Yes, slay Buttigieg for that. Ponder his views and ways as illustrated in that 2019 link and that performance (above) on YouTube and the proven views and ways of Donald Trump. Which one of those two would have better qualities and less negatives to be President after 2024?
'Heard says she wants the Government to do more to help those who may be facing mortgage stress.'
Already!
Expect anyone coming under mortgage stress to blame the….gummint now.
Mother says time with her baby will be cut short because monthly home repayments are set to jump $800 a month | Stuff.co.nz
High interest rates as passive population control. Awesome.
So long as the Ardern government imports enough Filipino RNs for rest homes we'll be right jack.
Do those who look constantly for handouts understand that it is tax money they demand? Who is going to pay? Or are we back to printing.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/opinion-analysis/126261112/who-will-pay-the-price-for-the-54-billion-spent-on-quantitative-easing
So it turns out that Omicron is just as severe as the previous Covid variants. It was all media bollocks from the business lobby to support opening up.
https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/omicron-severe-previous-covid-variants-large-study-finds-2022-05-05/?fbclid=IwAR2b5sJfZDgG_EjMkTWeWmS1V2S6SBVZICNuuM-hypVUcZ59V7EO8YT6Qf0
Interesting. That was the assumption that I made when I looked at those original studies on omicron.
They looked far too coarse grained for a population that was partially immunised and had treatments. Just simple bean counting without looking at nuance.
If you look closely at the NZ hospialisation demographic rates for unvaccinated where known (after the delta cases passed through), they look like Italy in early 2020.
Exactly. The continuous repetition of "more infectious but milder" smacked of an orchestrated campaign by business interests. It was never backed by the WHO.
I think the way to tame inflation is to crash the property market.
About a 60% fall should do it.
The effects of high mortgage and rent payments and their % of income is a big problem.
Mainly speculators and investors would be hurt.
More homes would appear on the market driving prices and rents even lower.
People who bought their houses to live in will still benefit from CG over decades,and FHB will be able to afford a…home.
Blazer, banks would fail, stocks would fall Kiwi saver balances would crash dreams would die.
Revolution of any kind has too many unintended consequences.
So whats the…bad …news!
Nope. The speculators and investors are unlikely to be hurt. Pretty much all of them have a healthy buffer of equity. And losses are only losses once you sell – so they're motivated to hang on to the property – for at least the 10 years required to escape the bright line test. Of course, in the meantime, they're also highly motivated to ratchet up the rent every year…
The people it clobbers are the new homeowners – with mortgages less than 3 years old. *If* they can hang on, they'll be OK. Banks have been stress-testing mortgage repayments at 7-8% over the last 2+ years before loaning money.
But anyone who is obliged to sell (marriage break up, illness, job loss, etc.) will take a hammering – and will probably come up with negative equity.
There will be some mortgagee sales – but everyone (banks included) wants to keep them to a minimum.
If prices drop,so will the equity required by banks regarding investors/speculators.
They will have to stump up or sell in a falling market.=more stock.
As prices rose 30% in Auckland in one year the rebalance is long overdue.
FHB's if the stress tests are real should be o.k.
No. Banks very, very rarely require an infusion of equity for existing loans – where there is a strong payment history.
Unless you have some evidence that this past practice is about to change.
Of course, if you want a further loan (say for renovations) or want to shift to interest-only, then they'll force a revaluation.
But banks don't want to force a sale — they'll make a heck of a lot more money, long term, off the mortgage repayments.
You will find banks most certainly require a capital injection from leveraged investors when the market tanks. Similar to a margin call on securities.
LVR restrictions mean that property investors (over the last 2? years) have needed to have a 40% deposit.
https://www.rbnz.govt.nz/education/at-a-glance-series/lvr-restrictions-at-a-glance
You'd have to have property market crash of epic proportions for them to be moving into negative equity.
Property investors with portfolios older than 2 years – will have 'benefited' from the capital increase – and, again it would take an epic property crash to shift their loan into negative equity.
Highly leveraged property investors are pretty much a thing of the past in NZ.
And the world dosn't end…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_property_bubble#:~:text=The%20collapse%20of%20the%20property,apartment%20prices%20down%20over%2062%25.
Finding it very curious that there have been numerous debates here on who is, should or can be a "woman". Over the last few days there has been much publicity about the nasty attack on Nadia Lim in the NBR by the Henry person. Pleasing to see all the support she has had from numerous people. But none or very little comment here!
The CEO Simon Henry is a misogynist, and has been outed.
Nadia is self made, but her business took advantage of shareholders and holes in the current system through pumping possible profits, selling shares and realising wealth where other investors won't get much.
So support for her position is muted, as the man is an egg, but his premise of overhyping the shares was real. imo.
Well I’m not going to get too excited about reality TV participants and their subsequent business activities–but Mr Henry deserves the shower of shit he is getting. He could have just stuck to his business grumble, without invoking misogyny and racial slurs.
“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.”
― Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Oh that were so in NZ! The reality is NZ is a venal money trench for the elite and petit bourgeoisie, a neo liberal state in legislation and reality, so no revolution just yet. But change is a coming…one way or another. Generation rent and student loan and alienated working class know that, it is a matter of what the direction is.
The Convoys and Groundswells had their go at being that change, but have ‘blown their bags’ to use an old crudity, as far as can be seen, they had their chance.
A new political movement (not just Parliamentary Party) is certainly needed to challenge and retire neo liberalism. But given all the requirements to register new parties and do community organising and activism, that should probably be kicked out to the 2026 General Election. There are ultimately few ‘organisational solutions to major political problems.’
But for 2023 certainly the Greens and Te Pāti Māori should be the target for pressure to support working class friendly policy in case they are able to form a Government with Labour. A combination of tactics–turn Green and Māori left as possible, and strategy–keep the dirty filthy natzos out, as the ground is prepared for a generational break through in 2026.
This country is a Tale of Two Cities and needs people power to turn it around, passivity and compliant consumers have had their day.
To Labour and the Scientists Thanks for a great fight against Mico plasma bovis. In spite of the refusal to comply by some rednecks, we are almost free of this scourge.
Next will be the tropical blackworm which is able to demolish a garden in days.
http://www.voxy.co.nz/health/5/401947
"Biosecurity New Zealand is closely monitoring reports of a Foot and Mouth disease (FMD) outbreak in Indonesia, says Biosecurity New Zealand Deputy Director-General Stuart Anderson."
"We will review the latest information from Indonesia and boost our already strong measures at the border if required.
"An audit last year of Indonesia's supply chain for palm kernel, which is used as a feed supplement in New Zealand, showed it was meeting strong import health requirements."
NZs worst nightmare.
Yes Pat that would be very grim.
There is a Turning Away happening in the US – not the Floyd version, but arguably a response to it. When working no longer gets one anywhere, that old tune in, turn on, & drop out looks better every day.
Sad, sad thread on how people were and are treated like dust in Russia.
1/ The following thread is an attempt to explain Russia(TM) to you from my Soviet-Russian-speaking-Ukrainian-Jewish perspective. I didn't eat wisdom with spoons. Please add and correct!
2/ We are currently seeing many Russians on the streets of Russian cities in heroic protest against the war. Navalnyj said "If we have to clog up their prisons with our bodies, then we'll do it".
[…]
(Now also enjoy this thread as a blog post: marinaweisband.de/russia-verst… )
google translate