New Plymouth council saves thousands from sunshine after solar rollout

Solar energy is shaving thousands of dollars off council power bills in New Zealand's sunniest city - New Plymouth.

Two council solar systems installed this year are expected to have paid for themselves within six years.

An array of 100 solar panels was installed on the roof of the district council's climate-controlled Archives building, in Hobson Street, in March. It was expected to generate around 80,000 kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity per year, equivalent to that required to power about 10 four-person households.

During its first month of operation, the system generated savings of more than $1000 on the council's monthly power bill.

Another solar panel array installed on the TSB Showplace in June was expected to generate more than 30,000 kWh per year.

Both systems supply about 35 percent of each building's power over the year.

NPDC climate change response lead, Greg Stephens, said since November around half of the council's electricity requirements - 6.2 gigawatt hours, about the same as 885 average four-person households - had come from its New Plymouth Airport solar farm.

"Like every household, we want to get the best deal possible on our power bills and what could be better than harnessing one of our district's most plentiful resources - sunshine.

"Solar power promises to save money for ratepayers and it's a benefit to the environment. It also makes sense for our local economy too because we employ local contractors.

"We'll keep looking at opportunities to harness the sun and make savings because electricity powers our core services such as street and traffic lights, keeps our water and wastewater pumping, charges our electric vehicle fleet, our pools, libraries and venues, not to mention keeping the lights on at the TSB Festival of Lights and our summer gigs at the Bowl of Brooklands."

At a glance

NPDC's average monthly power bill is about $280,000, excluding GST

The Archives building solar array cost $63,000 and at the TSB Showplace $33,000

Solar power from New Plymouth Airport has enabled NPDC to get a discount of about 20 percent on the general market rate for electricity

The Airport solar farm has about 14,400 solar panels over 15 hectares and is funded from Airport revenues

NPDC has about 110 vehicles, including nine electric vehicles, 22 hybrids, and two plug-in hybrid electric vehicles

It operates about 11,167 street lights, almost all of them have been energy-efficient LED lights since 2019

Since 2018, NPDC emissions from natural gas use have fallen 24 percent to 2013 tonnes of CO2 equivalent, and emissions from electricity by 22 percent to 1249

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