Opportunities for change

Every once in a while, I come across an interesting story in a very indirect way, and it’s even better when it’s a topic I’m both insterested in, and that’s also timely. Creating green hydrogen in Australia using some Kiwi can-do is just the sort of thing I might not expect, particularly when it came by way of Facebook.

The video up top is from Australia’s “A Current Affair” programme from Channel Nine. The specific segment, abuot producing hydrogen in Australian using solar power, came to my attention because of a Facebook post by “I Fucking Love Australia”, an unabashedly lefty Facebook Page that often talks about politics, including the dire affect the USA’s Felon in Chief has on the world. The post was also published on the “IFLOZ” Substack, and it was on Substack that I saw the video.

I was interested in this story because I’ve said for years that producing green hydrogen should be a major focus for New Zealand. “Green hydrogen” production is carbon neutral because it’s made from water using solar, wind, or hydro electricity. When produced from fossil fuels, it’s usually called “blue hydrogen”, unless it’s made from coal gasification, when it’s called “brown hydrogen” because it’s usually made from lignite, aka “brown”, coal.

As you may be aware, New Zealand is surrounded by water, and we have ample sources of hydro, geothermal, and, increasingly, grid-scale solar power. The story in the video is about using hydrogen to make fertiliser, but they mention making it to be used as fuel, too. When hydirgen is burned, its byproduct is water vapor, not deadly gasses like fossil fuels produce. If NZ fully commited to hydrogen, we could be self-sufficient in carbon-neutral fertiliser AND fuel for our vehicles, and no idiotic war on the other side of the planet could affect our fuel and fertiliser ever again.

Australia, because of its size and suitability for solar power, could become an exporter of fertiliser from green hydrogen, and help the world turn its collective backs on the volatile Middle East while also helping other countries reduce their carbon emissions. There are so many wins.

There’s one final twist in the path to this particular story. This evening I checked Facebook and saw a post from the IFLOZ Facebook Page saying they were going to concentrate on Substack, where most of their content will be by subscription. They’re doing this, they say, because Facebook has been de-emphasising content from the political left, and that results in declining ad revenue for the content creators, and they had charts to back that up. They also suggested that Facebook is doing it because their future plans will require consent from the current US regime, and so they’re basically turning down the volume of the Left in order to avoid problems with the regime. Whatever the specific reason, many left-of-centre content creators on Facebook have complained about suddenly declining page views, and so, revenue. I have no idea whether the speculations about the motivations are correct or not, but given the current regime’s constant posturing against the First Amendment to the USA’s Constitution, the speculation is at least plausible.

Still, it’s always nice to run across a topic I’m intertested in, no matter how roundabout the course may be. Apparently I won’t have a repeat of this particular path, though. There’ll be others.

I made more sunshine

Everyone knows that to make electricity, solar panels (often formally called “photovoltaic”, or “PV” panels) need to have daylight, ideally full sun. This is why solar panels don’t produce much electricity on cloudy days—and none at all at night. The number of daylight hours matters, too, which is why the panels make more electricity in the summer than in winter. And, of course, bright sunny days are the absolute best days for solar power. But, what if the amount of sunshine, whatever it is, is shielded? I just took steps to increase the amount of sunshine hitting my panels, and so, the amount of electricity they make.

Not for the first time, I learned about the existence of something through Facebook ads. In this case, it was about the importance of having solar panels cleaned in order to maximise the amount of electricity the panels create. Last week, I had a specialist company clean my panels, and yes, it was worth it.

The company also cleans large banks of panels for commercial operations, so I had confidence they knew what they were doing—though the reviews I checked were also all positive. They do a thorough check of the system, for example, making sure none of the glass is cracked, that the mounts are secure, and that the inverter (which converts the DC power from the panels into AC power used by the house or sent to the grid) is functioning properly.

The specific thing that caught my attention in the ads was about removing lichen—something I’d never considered. A few weeks ago, I looked at my panels and realised they had lichen growing on them, which is like little pads of shade all over the panels. I also noticed they were dirty.

At first, I thought about getting an extra long-handled washing brush, the type typically used for washing windows on upper floors while standing on the ground. I realised, though, that I’d probably still have to climb a ladder, something everyone in the family thought was a bad idea. Hiring someone was the alternative.

The Before and After photos up top are part of what I posted to social media, and the ones at the bottom of this post were taken by the person who cleaned the panels, looking down the roof toward the ground, an angle I’d never seen before. The whole process took a couple hours or so, and I didn’t need to be at home for them to do it.

And, yes, it was worth it.

I looked at the information my inverter logs to see of there was an obvious difference in electricity production, but I needed to figure out the best way to compare, given that this is Spring, and the weather is so changeable. So, I just looked at the four highest-production days before the cleaning and the four highest afterward—but not including the day they were cleaned—and averaged them for both periods. After cleaning, the panels were producing just under 20% more power than before they were cleaned, which is quite significant. Before the panels were cleaned, the highest production day made 26.30 kWh of electricity, and the highest after they were cleaned was 31.51 kWh.

The more power that’s generated, the bigger the potential financial benefit—obviously. I benefit mainly from getting free electricity to used in the daytime, and anything I don’t use is sent to the grid, earning me credits to reduce the amount I pay for electricity thre rest of the time. This is where the inverter stats became unreliable—but still interesting.

The inverter tracks all the electricity I produce, of course, and the software estimates my “savings”, which is an estimate of the amount of money I’ve saved from using the solar power myself and from the credit I get for the power I send to the grid. However, to be accurate, they need to use an accurate rate—called a “tariff”—to make the calculations, and I don’t know whether the rates are accurate or not. So, with that rather huge caveat, the estimate on the fourth post-cleaning day was that from the date the system went live three years ago until the fourth day after cleaning, my savings totalled $5,955.30, of which $1,121.57 was just for 2025 to that date (and October’s savings to that date were $87.53). While I doubt those numbers are accurate, if they were, it would mean that the savings have recovered nearly half of what I paid to install the system. Regardless, the free power I use on sunny days does save me a lot of money.

I clearly take all the information about savings with a huge grain of salt. I plan to try to work out how accurate their calculations are, but that’s a project for future me. In the meantime, I just think it’s interesting.

The bottom line—literally—is that keeping the panels clean means more electricity generated, and that, in turn, means more savings for me (whatever the amount is…). Most importantly, all this also means that I don’t “waste” any electricity I use in the daytime, which was really the main thing I wanted, because it achieves my goal of treading more lightly on the planet. Everybody wins—including the planet.

Winter again. Again.

Today is the first day of Winter in the Southern Hemisphere (or this part of it, anyway). Winter is absolutely my least favourite season (I don’t like it all, but I don’t want to provoke it by saying that…). On the bright side, three months to Spring?

The image above is what I posted on my personal Facebook, something similar to what I do every year. While I have that “tradition”, any season isn’t necessarily like it was in other years. This year, NIWA is predicting the temperatures will be warmer than average. We’ll still have cold snaps, of course, but, overall, the temperatures should be at least somewhat higher than usual. Apparently, this is happening because sea temperatures around New Zealand and 1 to 4 degrees Celsius higher than normal for this time of year. In fact, researchers have found that the oceans around New Zealand are warming faster than anywhere else. This, in turn, leads to more severe weather, rainfall in particular. [see also 1News’ weatherman Dan Corbett’s look at our coming winter weather, advising us “Get ready for a wild ride”. So, yay.

I suppose maybe it’ll give me stuff to blog about, so there’s that, I guess. Yeah, but I still prefer the other three seasons.

Rubbish communication

Recycling has become a touchy issue these days. Some people think it’s all a scam, that it’s all dumped in landfill (it’s not), some bizarrely see recycling as some sort of “virtue signalling” (probably because of their general anti-rational way of thinking…), and some people try their best to recycle everything, sometimes including things that can’t be recycled. New Zealand is about to change what it collects for recycling, and most people were probably blindsided by the news.

On January 16, the day before I left Hamilton for Auckland (and the start of my trip), I saw a Facebook Post from Hamilton City Council HCC) on changes being made to kerbside recycling. It said:

From 1 February 2024, the Ministry for the Environment is standardising kerbside recycling.

This means all Councils in New Zealand will be required to only accept plastics 1, 2, and 5 in the yellow-lidded recycling bins (along with paper, cardboard, clean tins and cans). Glass will still be collected in the blue/green glass crate as normal.

This is a change from what Hamilton City Council previously accepted, which were plastics 1-7.

At the time, I was very busy getting ready for my trip, and too stressed to give it any headspace. However, I was a bit annoyed with the Ministry for springing the changes on us. Hamilton, as their post said, collected plastics 1-7, and it annoyed me that we had to start throwing some plastics in the rubbish, and annoyed me even more that I couldn’t get rid of what I already had in my recycling wheelie bin because I’d be away the last time recycling would be collected before the change in the rules. The notice was so short!

After I got back from Fiji, I saw another post from a different local council, Waikato District Council (which borders Hamilton City Council), and their announcement directed people to throw absolutely recyclable things into the rubbish:

The new government recycling standards come into place next Thursday, but don’t worry we’re already on the right track.

The only changes to your recycling collection will be:

• No lids can be collected. Not even your ice cream container lid. This includes metal and plastic lids.

• Containers should be no larger than 4 litres.

• Anything under 5cm x 5cm can no longer be recycled.

My reaction to that was, WTF?!!, only it was the words, not the initials. HCC had said absolutely nothing about lids in their post, so, which was it?!

I decided to go to the source of the trouble and confusion, The Ministry for the Environment, finally finding the apparently unironically titled page, “Improving household recycling and food scrap collections”. It turned out that the new rules weren’t being “sprung" on us. As it appeared: They’d been finalised in March 2023—nearly a year ago—but this was the first I’d heard anything about it.

It’s possible that the evening news reported on it at the time, but if they did, I certainly didn’t hear it. However, it doesn’t sound like the sort of thing they would report, at least, not in detail. I also never saw any notices from HCC at the time, however, due to Facebook’s famously bizarre algorithms, I don’t always see what they post, and as far as I know, they don’t use any medium other than Facebook (and their own website) to spread news. Add it all up, and there was little chance I’d know about the changes earlier.

I looked through the information on the Ministry’s site, and found that Waikato District’s post was basically accurate—except about the ice cream container lids, I couldn’t find anything about that (the information is available as a PDF on the Ministry’s website). However, Waikato District got some things wrong, like about can lids: “Steel-can ends can also be accepted if securely enclosed inside the can, for example by placing the lid inside the can and squeezing the top of the can closed.” They can also be left partly attached to the can.

At first I thought I’d have to stop putting all lids (including metal jar lids) into the recycling, but then I remembered that HCC hadn’t said anything about metal or ice cream container lids, or about containers larger than 4 litres. So, it seems that for us, for now, that part isn’t changing.

I have absolutely no idea why Waikato District is going farther than HCC, nor whether their rubbish is sorted at the same place or not. However, strategically, it makes sense to hold off on banning loose metal lids, ice cream lids, and containers larger that 4 litres, if they must be banned, because making too many changes too fast will lead too many people to just give up and throw lots of recyclable things in the rubbish. Once they start doing that, it’ll be incredibly difficult to get them to start recycling again. It seems Waikato District doesn't see it that way.

The change in plastics recycling really doesn’t affect me: Types 3, 4, 6, and 7 collectively make up about 5% of all plastics, and for consumers, it’s mainly things like individual containers of yoghurt (the larger tubs tend to be type 2 plastic), sour cream, etc. So, in practical terms, this won’t really affect me all that much—but I took the time to find out the real story—I doubt very many people actually do that. Councils need to get much better at communication if they want people to comply with new rules, and to avoid confusing people.

This isn’t the first time I’ve criticised HCC for poor communication about recycling (See: “”Not really very clear” from January 2022), however, credit where credit’s due. In a new Facebook post on January 22, when I was still in Fiji, HCC was clearer about what the change is:

From 1 February 2024, the Ministry for the Environment is requiring all Councils across New Zealand to collect only plastics 1, 2, or 5 from the yellow-lidded recycling bins (along with paper, cardboard, clean tins and cans). ♻

You can tell what the plastic number is by checking the triangle on the bottom—some plastics look similar, so it pays to check. If there's no number or it's too hard to read, put it in the rubbish bin.

Examples of plastics 1, 2, and 5 👉 Milk, soft drink and juice bottles (without the lids – these go in the bin), large yoghurt containers, 2L hard ice cream containers, cream cheese, sour cream and cottage cheese containers, some dip containers, and some tomato, BBQ, and mustard squeeze bottles. It also includes meat trays and some takeaway containers.

Examples of plastics 3, 4, 6, and 7 👉 Small yoghurt/sour cream pottles, styrofoam, PVC pipes, polystyrene, biscuit and cracker trays, pill packets, some dip containers, soft plastics (plastics you can scrunch in your hand such as biscuit and cracker bags and trays, packaging from bread, rice, packaged vegetables and fruit, and shiny gift wrap) and some tomato sauce, mustard and BBQ squeeze bottles.

Although this is better, there was still poor communication: The bit about recyclable lids from milk and soft drink containers going “in the bin” may possibly mean the rubbish bin, but it’s not clear. The document from the Ministry would suggest that’s what HCC meant, because they’re too small, but it’s absolutely not obvious or clear.

Good communication from government wanting us to do (or not do) something is absolutely critical if they seriously expect compliance of any sort, especially correct compliance. However, many of the new regulations—about lids in particular—strike me as a “them” problem, not an “us” problem. If they’re “difficult” to process, then the correct action is for them to fix their procedures and methods. Failing to do so will lead more and more people to give up recycling in confusion and frustration. All councils already have problems with people illegally dumping rubbish, government at all levels, central government in particular, <i>must</i> get their acts together and make it easier to recycle, not harder.

Related: “Banning more plastics in NZ”, my post about the changes made last year.

The graphic up top is from the Ministry for the Environment.

Real plastic changes

There’s a clear momentum in many countries for companies to move away from single use or hard to recycle plastics. Whether that’s because of consumer demand, government regulation, or cost is irrelevant: They’re doing the right thing and that should be acknowledged—even as we urge them to keep moving toward sustainability.

Last week, the obviousness of change was brought home to me through two supermarket chains. Last Friday evening, hours before New Zealand’s new plastic bans took effect, I stopped in New World on my way home from a family get-together. I was curious and looked: Their produce section already had paper bags for customers to use, and there were no rolls of plastic bags that I could see. They may have made the switch ages ago, for all I know, because I wouldn’t have noticed: I’ve had reusable mesh bags for produce for several years. Regardless, it was good to see they were ready ahead of the deadline.

A few days later, I was placing a delivery order with Countdown (part of New Zealand’s other supermarket chain), and I saw the ad at the top of this post, one of several that cycled through their main web page. In January of last year, I blogged about how only some plastics were easily recyclable, and coloured drink bottles weren’t among them. I was glad to see that the Coca-Cola company was taking responsible action.

Throughout the slow walk away from single-use and hard to recycle plastics, the degree of acceptance has varied, particularly among affected businesses. Both supermarket chains started working on produce bag replacements by the time plastic shopping bags were banned, and spokespeople for both companies talked about problems. There’s nothing quite like a looming deadline to spur action, and whether or not that was an immediate motivator for the supermarket chains or not doesn't really matter because it imposed a deadline—and both companies got there.

The bottle change is a bit more interesting to me, and, of course, I had to learn more. It turns out that the decision was announced on May 1 of this year. According to the company’s website:

Coca-Cola in New Zealand has today announced that after nearly 60 years Sprite’s iconic green plastic bottles will switch to clear plastic, making them easier to recycle into new bottles.

While green PET plastic is recyclable, it’s usually converted into single-use items like clothing and carpet that cannot be recycled again.

The change is being made globally, because it “reflects the company’s commitment to prioritise sustainability and drive packaging circularity”. I actually think this is true: It’s good business for companies to make an effort toward sustainability, but if they’d persisted with difficult-to-recycle green bottles, sooner or later there would’ve been consumer backlash—just another reason the move made good business sense. Still, it’s no small thing considering that the product has been in green bottles since it was introduced in the 1960s (the no sugar version has been in clear plastic bottles for a very long time).

These two things—making an early change to paper rather than single use plastics, and changing a plastic bottle colour to one that can be recycled multiple times—are each obvious moves for the companies to make. The first was needed because a rule change made it necessary, and the second because consumer demand could ultimately drive sales down without the change. However, there are also incidents of companies that resist, such as, continuing to use banned plastics, and those are the sorts of things that get reported by the new smedia. I think we should acknowledge that, regardless of motivation, sometimes companies just get on with what needs to be done.

And yet, there’s still so much more to be done.

Almost two years ago, I wrote ”The problem is more than plastic”, a blog post in which I talked about some of the problems remaining. Nothing much has been done about the problem with things made from mixed plastics or that otherwise can’t be recycled. Personally, I’d like to see government come up with a plan to ban such plastics, too, but that’ll take alternatives and support from companies (like food and food product manufacturers) to make that happen.

In the meantime, I’d like to see a sustained effort, with significant government support, to educate people on sustainable alternatives to using plastics of any kind. At the same time, we all need to take responsibility for living more sustainably.

I’m trying to practice what I preach. Just as I researched and found reusable mesh bags for produce long before the single-use plastic versions were banned, so, too, I’ve been researching and trialling alternatives that, at the very least, reduce the amount of plastics I use—not merely hard-to recycle plastic, but all plastics. I’ll soon start blogging about my efforts in the hope that they may be useful to others.

On the meantime, though, things in New Zealand, at least, are moving in the right direction. We’re far from solving all the problems associated with the use of plastics, and there are some big and difficult challenges in the way, but just a little more determination can go much farther toward getting us there.

Important Note: The names of brands/products/companies listed in this post are used merely for purposes of description and clarity. No company or entity provided any support or payment of any kind for this blog post. The opinions I expressed are my own genuinely held opinions, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the manufacturers, retailers, or any known human being, alive or dead, real or corporate. Just so we’re clear.

AmeriNZ Podcast episode 388 is now available

AmeriNZ Podcast episode 388, “Future-like”, is now available from the podcast website. There, you can listen, download or subscribe to the podcast episode, along with any other episode.

The five most recent episodes of the podcast are listed on the sidebar on the right side of this blog.

Banning more plastics in NZ

From midnight tonight, more single-use plastics will be banned in New Zealand, including a first-in the world ban of plastic bags used to pack-up fresh produce in supermarkets. This is yet another move toward dramatically reducing the amount of hard-to-recycle plastic that ends up in landfills, the ocean—and us.

The plastics that are banned from tomorrow, in addition to those thin plastic produce bags are: Plastic tableware (used at foodcourts/fast food places, and that includes plates, bowls, trays, and cutlery), plastic straws (except for disabled people and those with health needs), and a transition will begin toward home-compostable stickers on produce (like apples, for example). This will be the latest step in a program that actually began in 2018.

Back in 2018, plastic microbeads were banned. Those were typically used in things like cosmetics, face scrubs, etc. They ended up contaminating waterways, the oceans—and people.

The next year, 2019, single-use plastic shopping bags were banned. They were common in many shops, like supermarkets. I’d already made the switch to reusable bags long before the ban came into force, but that was so unremarkable to me that I don’t seem to have ever talked about it specifically (unlike when I converted to reusable mesh produce bags).

In 2021, the government announced its three-phase plan to phase out “problem plastics”. Phase One of the current programme began in October of last year, and it banned some PVC food trays and containers, polystyrene takeaway food and drink packaging, all expanded polystyrene food and drink packaging, all “degradable” plastics (things like bags that contained “pro-degradant” additives, including oxo and photo degradable plastics; those products simply produced microplastics and couldn’t be recycled), single-use plastic drink stirrers (like for coffee and tea), single-use plastic-stemmed cotton buds (such as, Q-tips). Phase 2 is what begins tomorrow.

In 2025, Phase 3, the final phase, will ban all PVC and polystyrene food and drink packaging not already banned. By this point, all those produce stickers will need to be sustainable.

We have a long way to go, and we still need to find better ways of recycling plastics we can’t yet replace, even as work to find sustainable alternatives continues. New Zealand has been working hard at finding solutions, even as we find ways to avoid using plastic packaging at all.

The work to eliminate as much plastic as possible, as quickly as possible, is about more than overflowing landfills and wasted resources, it’s about health. Last year, researchers found that Auckland’s air contained microplastics equivalent to three million plastic bottles a year, and microplastics—especially the even smaller nanoplastics—now being found in humans alarmingly often, and because of that, they’re suspected of being capable of possibly causing some cancers or other diseases, particularly involving the lungs.

When plastics started taking over the world, we didn’t know how dangerous plastics, especially single-use plastics, would be to the environment—and to humans. We need to get serious about ending this problem. I’m glad I live in a country that’s doing exactly that.

Related: “Guidance on single-use plastic products banned or phased out from July 2023” – New Zealand Ministry for the Environment

Graphic above is from the New Zealand Ministry for the Environment [SOURCE].

Refreshingly different

I’ve seen a lot of videos about New Zealand over the years, and the quality has been—varied. Sometimes the information included is merely dated, sometimes it’s flat out wrong, and other times there are at least some accuracies. The video above has far more hits than misses, and that’s extremely refreshing.

The video isn’t perfect of course—I firmly believe that few things created by humans are—but I’d say that what I mainly have mere quibbles rather than objections. The biggest of those is that there’s a growing consensus among scientists that Māori probably arrived in New Zealand several hundred years earlier than around 1250 CE as the video narration states, so it would’ve been nice if that had been acknowledged, even in passing. More seriously, perhaps, was that the appalling treatment of Māori by the Crown, and especially the colonial government, should have been addressed by itself because it strongly influenced how land use developed in New Zealand, as well as many of the problems that exist to this day. Actually, another quibble is how “Māori” is pronounced throughout the narration: While it’s not a bad approximation, and arguably better than usual for the narrator’s accent, it’s not quite right.

On the other hand, at one point the narrator was talking about food production in New Zealand, and, it seemed to me, was a bit unnecessarily negative. At the time, I was thinking to myself, “yeah, but we produce enough food to feed 40 million people,” and then the narrator said exactly that and the quibble was erased (and it gave me a chuckle).

There haven’t been all that many videos about New Zealand that I’ve shared/recommended over the years, and most of those are ones made in New Zealand by New Zealanders. A lot of the videos I’ve shared have been ones I thought were funny, especially if I felt they showcased the NZ sense of humour and sensibilities. Of course, that, too, is a useful way to explain the country. But it’s nice to be able to share a quite recent video explaining something about New Zealand that many people overseas would almost certainly never think to explore.

All of which makes this video a refreshing change.

A Tip o’ the Hat to my nephew for sharing the video with me; I doubt I’d have run across it otherwise.

The power of summer

Summer has a lot going for it—in a normal year. One of the many things I like about the season is that (in a normal year) my solar panels generate a lot of electricity, but was that dramatically different this year? Naturally, I had to look at the numbers to see what happened in this year's non-normal summer. That took a lot longer, and a lot more work, than I expected.

I’ve been working on this post for the past three weeks, each version different from the one before. It began because I wanted to see how the storms in January and February affected my power generation, but then I wanted to to know, precisely how well the system was helping me meet my only goal, namely, to tread a little more lightly on the planet and to live a little more self-sufficiently, as Nigel and always dreamed of doing. I think I finally figured out how to explain it.

It turned out to be difficult to work out the clearest and most accurate way to talk about how the solar panels perform. After several attempts, I finally worked out that I need to be able to answer these questions:

1. How much electricity is created by the panels?
2. How much of that electricity do I use myself? and so,
3. How much power is sent to the grid?
4. How does the production affect my power bills—how much electricity do I still have to buy?

The chart at the top of this post answers the first three questions for the first two summers the panels were in operation (the system was installed and switched on after Summer 2020/21 was over; in New Zealand, summer is from December 1 to March 1). The chart shows the results for each month of those summers, and the total amounts for the seasons.

Next, let’s look at how much electricity I purchased for all three summers I’ve lived in this house:

This chart shows how much electricity I was billed for in kilowatt hours (kWh). There’s an important caveat here: The billing period is from the third week to the third week of every month. That means that the bills for each summer month were actually for the period from the third week of November to the third week of February. Moreover, the meter reading wasn’t necessarily taken on the same day. Meanwhile, the data on my production is for calendar months. So, there isn’t a perfect alignment between the data for my generation and for what I was billed for. To get that, I’d have to put the daily data in a spreadsheet and then match it up more precisely with the billed periods.

Even if I did that, there’d still be one more problem: There’s a mismatch between how many kWh of electricity the power company credits for having been supplied to the grid by the panels, and how much the system records as having been sent to the grid, and that can be for more OR less electricity than my system says it sent. I have absolutely no idea why the numbers don’t match up.

All of that maters for the next chart, which ties to work out approximately how much total power was used at my house over the past two summers (with 2020/21 shown to compare months):

Putting aside the imperfect match between monthly periods of time, what this shows is that my approximate total power consumption—the solar power I used myself combined with what I bought—is actually higher than it was before the panels were installed. Despite that, what I actually paid less than I did before the panels were installed.

The lower bills are because of a simple fact: Every solar power kWh that I used myself is a kWh I’d have to buy if I didn’t have the panels. It’s not just that the power I used was free (thought it is), it’s that the price I pay to buy electricity is higher than the credit I receive for power I send to the grid. For both those reasons, it makes sense for me to use as much of the power I generate as I can. As I’ve talked about before, I do power-hungry things—laundry, running the dishwasher, even charging batteries—in the daytime. I also can run my heat pumps 24/7 to keep my house at a constant temperature and still pay less than I did during my first summer, before the system was installed.

Overall, the data shows that over summer I’m buying a bit more than half as much electricity as I did before the panels went online—in fact, in that first, pre-solar power summer, I bought nearly twice as much power as I did in the following two summers combined. So, yes, I’m treading a little more lightly on the planet (though I can do better still, of course).

Which brings me back to the question that started all this for me: How was the system’s production affected by all the storms? These two monthly charts show that:

This underscores what I said at the time: Cyclone Hale wasn’t too bad in Hamilton—roughly like any other rainy day—and the Anniversary Weekend storm was much worse. Cyclone Gabrielle, however, was the worst of all. There were still good days for solar production in those months, but bad days can be very bad.

In each of the past two summers, February was less productive than either December or January, and that makes sense: Bad weather is most likely in February, which is in cyclone season. Even so, production is always highest in summer, and lowest in winter, due to the longer days of summer (more sunlight). Winter is usually rainier/overcast more than in summer, too, further reducing the amount of power that can be generated.

That’s my swim through the pools of data about how the solar panels perform. The main thing I found is the most obvious thing: The panels are helping me to achieve my goal and to live a piece of the dream that Nigel and I had. That’s a huge win. The lower power bills are pretty good, too, though.

Storms and storms to come

This past weekend, Auckland was hit with unprecedented rain. So far, Auckland has endured more than 800% of its normal January rainfall (about 55mm of rain): This January dumped 454mm—so far. Put another way, over the past 40 days, Auckland received 41% of the amount of rain it would normally get over an entire year. On Friday alone, the city received three times the amount of rain as it normally receives in the entire month of January—and most of that fell in a couple hours. The resulting flooding was deadly: Four people lost their lives. And at the moment, a new heavy rain system is on the way.

At least 5000 Auckland properties needed to assessed for flood or landslide damage, and when I checked earlier today, more than 200 houses and buildings had been red-stickered, which means no entry, and they cannot be used. Some early estimates where that this could be the costliest weather-related disaster in New Zealand history, and the second most costly overall (after the Christchurch earthquake). [Related: ”In photos: Auckland devastated by flooding, slips”, and the Stuff video above]

Community organisations have begun distributing things people need—chiefly food, clothing, personal supplies—and a relief fund is being set-up by Auckland Council to help communities in need. There will be more of all that.

While the focus has been on recovery, a new storm system is approaching. Northland has already declared a state of emergency, and a red rain warning has been issued for that region, the northern parts of Auckland, Coromandel, and the Bay of Plenty. All of those areas were affected a couple weeks ago by ex-Cyclone Hale, and the storm over the past weekend. The storm system over the next couple days will only make things worse because the hardest hit areas aren’t getting a chance to dry out between storms; sodden ground could mean more flooding than the amount of rain would normally cause. In other words, a very worrying time for people in the affected areas.

In light of all this, it feels shallow to mention this, but people who know me personally—or even just read this blog—will want to know: I’m fine, and while there’s been some surface flooding in Hamilton, and hasn’t been very serious. To the north, east, and south of us, there’s been a lot more flooding, but the winds and weather patterns spared us. We did get a lot of rain—far more than we got from Cyclone Hale—but it was nothing like what Auckland got. We were very, very fortunate.

The weekend’s storm had me very worried about all the folks I know in Auckland, of course. It was surreal to read the live reports and to see video images of places I know. Two of the people who drowned in the storm died in an area of the North Shore called the Wairau Valley, and I knew exactly where they were talking about because Nigel and I spent a lot of time in that area over the years. I can’t recall anything like that happening in my entire lifetime.

There’s been a LOT of criticism of the communications from Auckland Council, Auckland Transport, Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency (responsible mostly for state highways), and, especially, the city’s Mayor, Wayne Brown. Here’s just some of the critical reporting:

• ”Flooded homes, streets awash, but hours until an emergency declaration” – Stuff, 29 Jan.
• ”Countdown to Chaos: As Aucklanders were desperately seeking safety, officials were silent” – RNZ, 29 Jan.
• ”Wayne Brown announces independent review into flood response, but denies any wrong” – Stuff, 30 Jan.
• ”Waka Kotahi apologises after staff clocked off for the weekend during disaster” – Stuff, 30 Jan.
• ”Counting the ways Auckland was failed by its mayor” – Werewolf, 30 Jan.
• ”National Party MP Gerry Brownlee scathing of Auckland mayor Wayne Brown” – Stuff, 30 Jun.
• ”Auckland mayor's tennis text: Had to 'deal with media drongos over the flooding'” – Stuff 31 Jan.

There’s no dispute that official communication to desperate, frightened Aucklanders was non-existent for much of the evening. The only reliable information came from some Auckland Councillors (Richard Hills being a stellar example), local Members of Parliament, Auckland Local Board Members, and the news media. The Mayor and all official channels were silent until late in the evening. Whether Brown is uniquely and personally responsible is something that will be determined over time, but so far he at least seems to be trying to appear to be engaged—now—and that’s a good first step, but I suspect his massive ego and notoriously prickly personality will cause more trouble in the future.

A more immediate governmental impact is that today Prime Minister Chris Hipkins announced his cabinet reshuffle, and as part of that, the prime minister announced that MP Michael Wood will become Minster for Auckland. “The floods occurred right at the time when reshuffle was right at the front of my mind,” Hipkins said. He also noted that, “When Auckland succeeds, the country succeeds. I know that the last few years have been particularly tough for the City of Sails.” The position didn't currently exist, but it has in the past.

This has been a challenging time for Auckland and the entire northern part of the North Island. With a third of New Zealand’s population living in Auckland, disasters in the city and region affect the entire country. Thanks to the worsening storms caused by climate change, this is only the beginning of bad times. We'll all be watching to see how the city and country adapt.

Damn raingarden

The dual photos above and below are “before and after” photos of today’s project: Phase One of dealing with the damn raingarden in front of my house. Phase Two will involve some replanting and other maintenance work. I hate everything about this, not the least that I have absolutely no choice, nor a say.

The raingarden is something that Hamilton City Council requires for new housing areas in the city, and my house is in such an area. They’re intended to catch stormwater runoff from houses, giving it a chance to be absorbed in the ground through the raingarden or, if rains are extra heavy, to at least help hold it back before it gets to the stormwater system, and then heads toward the sea.

To be clear, I think the idea is great, and it will help reduce the amount of storm water that enters the stormwater network and, hopefully, the water that does will be (at least somewhat) cleaner than it otherwise might be. The issue for me is the burden it puts on homeowners: Hamilton is essentially outsourcing part of its stormwater management to homeowners who have to maintain their raingarden to Council’s specifications, and without any sort of support or compensation.

Here are my specific objections. First, I pay the same rates (similar to property taxes in the US, though different) as would be paid on a property similar to mine, but in a part of the city without raingardens. At the same time, I’m entirely responsible for maintaining the damn thing. That means I need to get down on the ground and pull the weeds—frequently. I’m supposed to put in fresh hardwood mulch every year, and “remove excess mulch every few years”. I’m supposed to trim/thin the plants, and replace them from to time—and I’m not allowed to change the species of plants nor to mix species (apparently only five plant species, all natives, are allowed, even if they’re ugly). All of that is on me, at my expense.

Like I said, raingardens are a great idea—on Council land and maintained by Council. It’s not fair for them to place the burden of maintaining the things onto someone who happens to live in only a certain part of the city, and also requiring them to donate their money and time and labour to the city; it should be up to me to volunteer my labour or to whom I donate my money.

At the moment, I can get down on the ground (getting back up again can be a challenge…), and I have to get down on the ground because the bottom of the thing is probably around 20 or 30cm from the ground level (my front lawn is a slight slope). If I still live in this house in my old age, I’ll have to hire someone to maintain it for me—at my expense, of course.

The damn raingarden, right in front of my house, is also ugly AF—it looks like a cattle trough (and it’s in a bizarre spot). The builder did the most absolutely basic, cheapest, bare minimum required, while better builders make them at least reasonably okay looking. But, then, the name-brand home building companies are big for good reasons, and attention to detail is one of the reasons. The ugliness isn’t Council’s fault, obviously, but maybe they should impose some sort of minimum design standards so they don’t look so gawdawful.

On the day I was going to have my pseudo-Thanksgiving dinner, I got a letter from a “stormwater compliance specialist” at Hamilton City Council. The letter informed me that my raingarden had been inspected by Council and there were “issues”, specifically, “incorrect plant selection” and “not enough plants”. No specific information was given to tell me what, precisely, they meant. Poor communication seems to be one of Hamilton City Council’s most notable attributes.

The very next paragraph began, “As this is a pilot programme, we will not be taking any action.” That sounded like a veiled threat to me, and referring to an enclosed poorly-written brochure wasn’t much help—but it was the first time in the nearly three years since I signed the contract that anyone has given me any information on what I’m supposed to do with the damn raingarden. So… that’s, progress?

Here’s the thing. As I’ve made clear, much as I think they’re a good idea (on Council land), I hate, loathe, and despise the raingarden on my property. However, I also do my damnedest to comply with laws and regulations, no matter how pathetic, stupid, unfair, or infuriating I think they are. In this case, my antipathy meant I wasn’t in any hurry to comply until that letter arrived.

Instead, I was more focused on the back part of my property, which was arguably even more neglected than the damn raingarden. And then the rains descended, and I wasn’t able to do anything outside—but the weeds sure got a lot done. The damn raingarden has long been plagued by convolvulus, a viney, fast-growing plant (the species includes morning glories and sweet potatoes)—and all the rain helped it grow even faster, quickly covering the entire thing. As soon as the weather broke, I planned to deal to the damn raingarden, and today the stars aligned.

I removed the weeds, including the runners that had wrapped themselves round and round the inside of the base. I filled a black rubbish bag with everything I removed, and that concluded Phase One (that bag is sort of a pre-composting; when it starts to break down I’ll put the contents—by then much smaller—in my actual compost bin).

Phase Two will involve re-planting, replacing dead plants. The builder planted three plants, which spread out over time—and then two died (maybe during the drought-like summer conditions?). I thought I’d have to dig them out, but today I tried pulling some out, and it turned they were easy to remove. Before I do that, I though, want to find the plants (the dead plants’ shade should discourage weeds in the meantime). I also have to find “hardwood mulch” (all of what I’ve seen in home centres is pine, though I suppose I may have just missed it). This all became a thing a little over a week ago when that letter arrived, and it was the very last thing I needed at the time. As I said in my post about Thanksgiving:

I had a demand made of me that was, at that moment, the “last straw”. I’ve been trying so damn hard to make progress around the house, outside in particular, and it’s been extremely difficult for a lot of reasons. Today I felt as if it was all pointless, that I was shoved back a hundred miles from the start line. Crushed, I was also livid, and I found myself swearing profusely if, say, an inanimate object fell over in the middle of me doing something.

I felt like all my hard work had been pointless because it suddenly wasn’t good enough. With that demand from Council, on top of other household work I’ve not gotten to, and the things the builder did wrong that I now have to deal with, all of that, in that moment I deeply regretted buying this house, and even moving to Hamilton (that was the part that passed the quickest, I might add: I was really just angry with Hamilton City Council).

However, as I also said in that post, “I talked myself off the ledge, and I was aware that Nigel could always do that—but even more aware that none of this stuff would be happening if Nigel was still here.” And that’s the short version of why I was so upset because of that letter. Still, I pushed past it, and today I began to do the work that Council requires—though even without that I would’ve got to it sooner rather than later.

I’ll have more to say about this when I get to Phase Two, and maybe my perspectives will have changed. But I’ll still hate that damn raingarden.

This photo is from the opposite side the photo up top was taken from, basically uphill from that one and looking down toward the street. The plants in the right foreground are dead.

Update – January 11, 2023: A week or so after I published this post, I found a company I can order the plants from, though I didn't because of the holidays. This was a good thing, because I remembered that this is the wrong time of the year for me to plant (I need to wait until it's close to autumn). This will give me some time to see if I can source them locally. I still haven't been able to find "hardwood mulch" anywhere in New Zealand. All of which means that "Phase Two" probably won't be until late February or early March.

Darn socks

We always hear how older generations knew how to avoid waste, often because of the Great Depression or the shortages caused by World War Two. To the extent that’s true, they taught what they knew to their children—often Baby Boomers—who, we are told, failed to teach their kids, and so on, leaving young(er) people today not knowing how to stretch food, to repair simple things, to grow food, and much more. Those impressions may or may not be true, at least generally, but I’m a Baby Boomer who was taught some of those apparently lost skills. Like darning socks.

When I was a young kid, I used to see my mother darning socks. With my dad working as a preacher and my mother a stay-at-home mother (as nearly all of my friends’ mothers were, too), she needed to make money go as far as possible. Eventually she taught me how to darn socks and how to sew a button on a shirt, things she would've thought would be useful for me. She never taught me to use a sewing machine, though, nor did she offer to do so, and I later wondered if it was because of gender roles of the time. I’ll never know, but I think that by teaching me to darn socks and sew a button onto a shirt, she have have merely responded to my curiosity (I watched her work and was fascinated).

In any case, knowing how to darn socks and sew buttons onto shirts was extremely useful over the years. I’ve been doing both for at least 55 years—though I started taking shortcuts with socks.

Her method was to take “darning thread”, which was like a rope of very lightweight threads, and weave a patch over the hole in the sock. This method was most useful for large hole, like on the heels. However, I eventually didn’t patch heels—I threw the sock away—because I could always feel the patch when I wore them, and it was uncomfortable. And, anyway, by the time the heel got a hole, it was usually too threadbare to bother darning.

A hole in the toe was always different, though, especially because it was often on a seam, and simple to simple stitch closed. I’ve darned socks this way since at least my university years, which means more than 45 years.

This suddenly became an important, priority task because in recent weeks sock after sock has developed a hole in the heel, and whenever that happened I threw the sock away. In this way, the situation became dire.

This sudden decline in my sock inventory began because several years ago—maybe eight to ten—I bought a LOT of socks at The Warehouse, New Zealand’s discount retailer that was originally modelled on Walmart. The thing about The Warehouse is that they have a particular product line for only a short time, as they constantly change suppliers to get products at ever cheaper prices, thereby increasing their profit margins. After being caught out several times (like with underwear), I finally learned to stock up on things in order for them to last for many years, because it was always certain that in a few months to a year the product I liked would be gone.

So, several years ago I bought pack after pack of socks at The Warehouse to replace the ones that were faded and worn out (nearly all had already been darned, sometimes more than once). Because I bought so many all at once, the socks are now wearing out all once, too. So, the sudden drop in my inventory of wearable socks is no surprise.

As it happens, I have socks with a small hole in the toe that I just never got around to darning (why take the time when I had so many in daily use?), but now I need them: This week, another sock gave me a hole in the heal I then had only four pairs left, and I had 6 and half pairs waiting to be darned. I completed the darning of socks yesterday. Back when I bought the stash of socks, I put aside a couple unopened packs (10 pairs), something I did to prepare for this very day. However, all of them will wear out, too, and I need to plan ahead.

I was recently at The Warehouse (they do have the best prices for ordinary socks…) and I looked at the packs of socks. Turns out, as usual, what they had was nothing like the ones I bought all those years ago (the current ones are made with thinner fabric, so they’ll wear out much faster). That’s the other reason I want to repair what I have: They’re better than what I can get now. At the same time, what The Warehouse now sells is nearly three times the price of the one I bought all those years ago: Back then, it cost me roughly $1.20 per pair, now it’s $3.

Which brings me to the moral of my story: We ought to have the right to repair anything we buy. Clearly I have the right to repair my socks or to sew a button on a shirt—no one would dispute that (though some have laughed at me and told me I should just throw out the socks and buy new ones), but there are plenty of things we buy that not only can we not not repair ourselves, it’s often impossible for anyone to repair them. That’s stupid and immoral.

Our landfills are clogged with things that can’t be repaired or easily recycled (another failing of manufacturers), and landfills have lots of such stuff, including large amounts of clothing and other textiles thrown into them. In the case of clothes, many people these days apparently don’t know how to repair them and feel they can’t justify the cost of taking them to someone who can when buying new is so cheap (price and quality…). So, into the rubbish it goes.

One of my core values is to live as sustainably as possible/practical, and I realise that sometimes it’s just not possible. I know that eventually my socks (etc.) will no longer be repairable. However, when I can, I repair things (including the humble socks) to delay the time when it has to be sent to landfill. If something can’t be repaired, I try to reuse it before throwing it away (for example, my cleaning rags are cut-up worn-out singlets). That’s better for the environment, obviously, but it also saves me a little money. Together, it’s a pretty good return on my investment of time and effort—for me. Others’ realities may be different.

I can’t repair everything, and I never could. Of course. But there are a lot of things I can fix, and all I need is a bit of time and little effort. It doesn’t save me huge piles money, of course, but, to me, living my values is worth far more than money.

Update: I had a late start today and had my shower after this post was published. When I went to put on socks, yet another one had a hole in the heel. I completed my darning just in time.

Day out discoveries

Today I went for lunch with my sister-in-law (different one than last week) and my mother-in-law, which was a really nice time (and good food). This was perfect for me because I planned on going to a supermarket today to pick up some odds and ends, and I was right near New World Rototuna, so no extra traffic navigation. And I discovered a few things.

I’ve always thought New World Rototuna was nice, a little more “upmarket” than the one in Te Rapa (different owners, and Rototuna is newer), but I still like Te Rapa New World better—it feels friendlier, for lack of a better word, and it’s usually better stocked, overall. When it opened, Nigel thought the Te Rapa New World was the nicest supermarket in New Zealand (seriously!), though I think he would’ve liked the Borman Road Countdown, though possibly not as much. Supermarkets, of course, are as much a matter of personal taste as anything else in life.

The shop had one thing I’ve never seen at a mainstream supermarket before: A refill station for ecostore products like dish soap, hand soap, that sort of thing. There’s a chain of small, locally-owned shops called “Bin-Inn”, which is known mainly for selling things in bulk, like flour, rice, yeast, etc., and they also sell (among other liquids) ecostore products, all of which I’d seen. This is simply the first time I’ve personally seen such a refill station in a mainstream supermarket (back in 2019, I talked about some refill options in an “Internet Wading” post (first topic in the post).

Such refills may (theoretically) be priced lower than pre-packaged products are, but the prices aren’t necessarily lower, but it's easy to check pre-packaged products on the shelves near the refill station. However, the biggest reason for using refill stations isn’t prices, it’s to eliminate packaging: Re-using packaging is far better for the environment than constantly buying new packaging, recycling it, and repeating the cycle endlessly.

To say I’m intrigued by this is a bit of an understatement. I feel a mini-investigation (and blog post) coming on.

As I walked through the supermarket, one thing I kept thinking was, “oh my dog the prices are high!” I only bought what I needed—or things I’ll need soon that were on special—but no luxuries or treats (apart from some wine and a frozen pizza). Even that restrained haul was easily 15% higher overall than a similar shop would’ve been, say, last year at this time, and that was with all the “supply chain disruptions” the two supermarket companies blamed rising prices and shortages on at that time. I did note, though, that some things were only up a small amount (mainly NZ-made stuff), and some stuff was up like 25% or more (that was stuff I didn’t buy, of course). C‘est la vie.

The soaring supermarket prices have had an accidental benefit for me: I’ve been getting good at making my food dollars go much farther, and I now generally only need to cook every other day (meaning I also I have leftovers every other day), and I have pretty much zero food waste. Sooooo, that’s good, right? I keep telling myself that.

At any rate, it was a good outing, one in which I had a good time, discovered things I didn’t know, and accomplished an errand. But the best part, I gotta admit, was how happy Leo was to see me when I got home. That always makes me smile.

Waste not

There’s one thing that’s been fairly consistent in my life for decades, and that’s a desire to live as sustainably as possible. It’s an attitude Nigel and I shared, and over the years we tried a number of different things to make that happen. After Nigel died, I focused even more effort on that, and it’s become a focus of much of what I now do, and what many of my projects have been about. That will continue for quite awhile.

Some time in the past year or so, I created a ”Sustainability” Label/Tag for posts on this blog. The orginal focus was the solar electricity system I had installed, but recently I started to broaden the topics. However, I’ve been blogging about sustainability for years, and I’ll eventually tag those older posts, too. Turns out, there are even some repeats.

The most direct repeat project was that Nigel and I installed an EnsoPet pet waste composter at our last house back in November of 2017. Nigel actually bought it for our previous house, but we couldn’t quite work out where to put it, so we never used it there. Even so, Nigel had fun asking guests to guess what the assembled (and never used) thing was, and he laughed when they were mildly grossed-out when he told them.

I had no intention of digging up the that one when I moved to Hamilton, so I bought a new one instead. I installed that one two years ago, but Sunny died about five months later, and Jake seven months after that. With just Leo, who’s a small dog leaving only small gifts, there just hasn’t been much need for it. The truth is, I almost never find the gifts Leo leaves in the lawn—in fact, I can’t remember the last time I did. So, that particular repeated project has turned out to be pretty much unnecessary. Still, it’s there if I need it, I suppose.

In September of 2017, Nigel and I started using a bokashi bin for food scraps, but we abandoned it after around eleven months. As part of that project, we also bought a rotating compost bin so we could finish composting the bokashi bin contents in it, something I talked about at the time. Both are being repeated.

The first repeat was buying and assembling a different rotating compost bin, something I did two years ago. I chose a different bin for two reasons: The old one (which I left at the last house when I sold it) was one big chamber, which meant that inevitably, we’d have to stop putting new stuff in to let the contents compost. That would’ve meant, at some point, throwing food scraps away, or resuming use of the bokashi bin, or—something. It turned out, we ran out of time to find a solution.

Things are different here in Hamilton. I live by myself and produce far less organic waste than two people do. Also, Hamilton City Council added a food scraps waste bin that they empty every week and commercially compost the contents. Any cooked or raw food and scraps, including bones, can go into the bin, as can some odd things, like cut flowers (but not any garden waste) and vacuum cleaner bag contents. I’ve used the service a few times, but, again, I don’t produce all that much so it seems kind of pointless.

However, whether I use the council bin or not, I still needed somewhere to get ride of some food waster, as well as garden waste (like weeds I’ve pulled—but not grass clippings, because my lawn mower mulches, something that’s greatly improved the quality of the “soil” of my lawns. The compost bin I bought came with a partition that can be put in the middle of the bin to create two separate chambers, something I thought was ideal: I could fill one chamber, then fill the second while leaving the first to finish composting, then empty the first one and then start filling it again while the second one composted. This year will be the first time I’ve actually emptied it (like I said, I haven’t had much to put in, so it takes me quite awhile to fill a chamber).

Which brings me back to the bokashi bin. I decided I wanted to try it again, thinking that if it can speed up the break-down of food scraps, the compost bin itself will go faster. I only started using it again this week, so it’s way too early to know if I’ll have better luck with it than in the past, but if it doesn’t, I could use the councils food scraps bin.

I’ve also tried to use or reuse things that I already have rather than buying new, even if that means adapting what I have. I have a few projects related to all that, and I’ll talk about them as I work on them.

The important thing, really, isn’t any specific things I’m doing, it’s that the whole point is to live my values, values I shared with Nigel. I want to live as sustainably as possible, and to tread as lightly on the planet as I can. To be clear, I’m no saintly monk: I still have me luxuries and indulgences, just maybe not as many or as frequently as I once did. What other people do or don’t do is entirely is up to them, and I have no interest in “judging” them for one simple reason: This isn’t about them, it’s about me. I have a vision for the kind of life I want to have, and it’s up to me to make it happen, for me.

So far, it’s working. I hope it’ll continue to do so.

Was it worth it?

The solar power system at my house has now been running for 12 full months. That leads to an obvious question: After a year living with the system, was installing it worth it? The short answer is, “yes, absolutely,” but the story, and why I say that, is complicated. It’s so complicated, in fact, that it’s taken me quite a long time to get this post completed.

First, though, a reminder of why I did this at all.

When I had the system installed, my motivation was simple: I wanted to tread more lightly on the planet, especially so that the technology I use and love wouldn’t take electricity from the national power grid. This reflects the values that Nigel and I shared, though for this particular one he wanted to use a wind turbine, something I knew was too problematic in the urban environment where I now live. At the time he died, Nigel was researching how to build a battery powerwall, which he definitely could’ve done, and we were planning to move somewhat more rural so we could have a wind turbine. In my new reality, it was clear that solar power was the best solution for me. All of that—and especially the fact that installing the system matched the values and goals that Nigel and I shared—is why I can say that yes, absolutely, installing it was worth it.

Next, some background: While the system itself included items the installer offered at special prices, it wasn’t subsidised in any way whatsoever: There were no tax breaks, and no power company offered any subsidy (none of them ever have). However, as part of the installation package, I switched to an electricity provider that gave me larger credits per kWh of electricity that I generate and send to the power grid (every other other company at that time paid less, sometimes dramatically so). In a sense, that’s a kind of subsidy, however, even at that higher rate, the electricity company still sells the power they “buy” from me at a much higher rate than what they credit my account with (they don’t actually pay me any money). Also, I have no ongoing costs, like loan servicing or anything else. So, the system was installed, switched on, and that was that. The last part of the system was installed in late May 2021, and so, the entire systems wasn’t up and running until the June 2021 billing month.

With all that out of the way, it’s time to talk money. The most common way that people look at the financial cost/benefit of such systems is to compare apples to apples: What would my power bill be if I didn’t have solar panels on the roof? That’s easy to see through the bills, but it's not even almost the complete story. Still, it’s a good place to start.

Over the first 12 months that the completed system was installed, I would've paid at least (I’ll come back to the “at least” part soon) $1,677.48 if I didn’t have the solar panels. However, my account received $746.97 in credits for the electricity my panels sent to the power grid, which was roughly 44% of the total I’d have paid without the panels. Looking at that another way, without the solar panels, my electricity bill would’ve averaged out at 139.79 per month, as opposed to the $77.54 that the monthly bills actually averaged out to (in reality, some winter months were much higher than the average, and summer months were much lower).

From a purely financial perspective, then, it would seem that the panels don’t create a large, obvious financial return. After all, at that rate it would take some 19 years before I’d break even (ignoring depreciation). However, appearances are deceiving.

Much—even most—of the positive financial aspect is invisible, and here’s why: The bills from the electricity company contain charges for the amount of electricity I buy from them, minus credit for the electricity I send to them, and that’s what I’ve just been discussing. However, the power from the solar panels that I use as it’s made is free—no one charges me for that.

This means that the credits I get from the electricity company for the electricity I send to them are for what’s leftover after I’ve used solar power to run the house. None of that power (called “self-consumption”, which sounds weird…) is tracked by the power company, of course, but I can look at charts produced by the “smart inverter” that runs the solar power system. On a sunny day, the power I need to run my house comes entirely from the solar power system AND I send some to the electricity company. In summer, when the weather is usually sunny and there are more daylight hours, that can mean sending a substantial amount of electricity to the power company on top of what I use. At night, it’s the opposite, and on dark, rainy, or heavily cloudy days, especially in winter, it’s mixed. When all of my household power needs are supplied by my solar power system, as it is on every sunny day and many cloudy ones, I’m 100% self-sufficient.

This self-consumption is the part that some people often overlook when calculating the true financial benefit from a solar power system. The electricity company charges me 27.35¢ per kWh for the power I buy from them, but they only credit me at 16¢ per kWh for the power I send to the grid. So, every kWh of self-consumed power saves me the equivalent of 11.35¢ per kWh. That hidden financial benefit is significant.

Let’s put some numbers into that. Normally, I’d get the actual production data from the smart inverter, but I can’t: There was a problem with it last year, and it didn’t report data from late June 2021 to late November 2021 (there were Covid Lockdowns in that period and, frankly, I was busy and just didn’t notice for a long time), so a LOT of the data is missing. Also, the inverter records data by calendar month, while my electricity is billed around the 22nd of the month—not a perfect match, in other words, but if I had data for the full 12 months I could work out the annual financial benefit from self-consumption.

Here’s what I DO know: I know for sure that that I saved $487.16 through self-consumption in the seven months of November 2021 through May 2022, and that’s money that I would’ve paid to the electricity company if I didn’t have the solar power system—remember, that self-consumption is power I actually used and would’ve used with or without the solar panels. That works out to an average savings of $69.59 a month for those seven months. If I use that amount for the whole 12 months, it would mean a savings of more than $800 for those 12 months—more than the credits I got on my power bill. In fact, using power through self-consumption while still sending some to the grid means that it’s at least possible, and probably likely, that my true savings on power over the first 12 months was actually at least as much as what I actually paid. Let me say that again: Using as much of the power I’m generating as I can, and sending the rest to the power grid, means my actual power costs without the solar power system would have been roughly double what I actually paid: $1,677.48 (before credits) for the year is way better than paying some $3200! It also means that I’ll reach the break-even point (again, ignoring depreciation) in half the amount of time.

This is difficult to grasp—it has been for me, anyway. I understand that I’m billed for the electricity I buy from the power company, an amount reduced by the power I send to the grid. The solar power that I use to run my house—the largely hidden savings from self-consumption—is power that I would otherwise buy from the power company, but I don’t need to, and until I started work on this analysis, it never occurred to me to account for it. And that’s why the actual savings are much better than what it looks like when looking only at power bills, as I always used to do.

Obviously I’d say that yes, absolutely, it was worth it to install the solar power system, because that would’ve been true regardless of the financials: This was always mainly about living my values. However, when you look at the totality of those financials, it makes financial sense for me, too. Living our values doesn’t have to mean losing money in the process.

This post has been about my own experience with solar power, something I did as a values-based decision and not a money-based one. The are ways to make the financial side better (or worse…), but for me, being able to live my values while also getting any financial benefit at all? Yes, definitely worth it.

Powerful developments

Today I received my latest bill from my electricity company. It was a good one—a very good one. This whole thing is getting very interesting—to me, anyway.

The image above is what I posted to my personal Facebook. I added in a comment:

This bill was so very low because my credit for solar production not only paid the charges for what I consumed from the power grid (mostly nighttime), it also partially offset the fixed charges that everyone pays. In technical terms, in summer I'm mostly self-sufficient in electricity, and this past month I was completely self-sufficient. This fascinates me. I'll be VERY interested to see how costs work out this year because it'll be my first full, calendar year with solar power.

That pretty much explains it, but there’s a little more to it, especially about the self-sufficiency thing. In my comment, I was referring to the fact that in summer I’ve needed very little power from the national grid, and that last month I needed none at all: I sold more power than I bought. But that’s only part of the story.

As I said back in October, “I do electricity-heavy things—like running the dishwasher, running the clothes dryer, even ironing clothes or recharging batteries—during daylight hours, ideally on sunny days.” This is important because I pay more for electricity from the grid than I’m paid for the power I send to the grid. This means that it makes more economic sense for me to use the power I generate during the day, rather than run those things at night when I have to pay for power. In summer, I still have a lot of power to send to the national power grid—even after using what I can—and that offsets the cost of the power I buy. This month it more than paid for the power I bought.

There’s a device attached to my photovoltaic cells that measures and controls solar power in and power sent out. It reports “self-sufficiency” as a daily thing, and as using only solar power to run the house. If I use less power than I’m generating, it says I’m 100% self-sufficient, and that can happen on any sunny day, regardless of the time of year.

However, the effects in winter aren’t as dramatic as in summer because I don’t generate as much power in the first place, let alone having as much to send out to the grid. In winter, it makes even more sense to “do electricity-heavy things… during daylight hours”.

The reason all this fascinates me so much because it’s real-life results, what I get living my ordinary day-to-day life. Until now, I’d ready a lot of generalised information about how solar power works in a home, and I saw results that were both far better and far worse than what I’ve actually experienced. But, how would it work in my own situation, without doing anything unusual? That’s what I’ve been fascinated to see.

Apart from running things in the daytime, I don’t do anything even remotely special, because all that is stuff I’d do in the daytime, anyway. My experience of this is so very ordinary, in fact, that I even have my two heat pumps running 24-hours a day, every day, and despite that—and very hot weather this summer—my power was basically free last month. That’s pretty cool, so to speak.

I’m fascinated by this because I get to see how the system affects my household under real-life, and real-world conditions, and not based on mathematical models and engineers' projections. The results for this past month were clearly very good, however, saving money was never my prime motivation for doing this. Saving money is always a good thing, of course—duh!—but for me the whole point was to live more sustainably and to reduce my burden on the planet. And all of that is why this whole thing is getting very interesting—to me, anyway.

Not really very clear

Over the years, I’ve talked a lot about my efforts at sustainability. Whether those efforts were big things, like installing photovoltaic panels to generate my own electricity, or smaller things, like the choices I make when buying products, it's all been about trying to tread as lightly on the planet as I can reasonably accomplish. Despite all the attention on climate change, though, attempting to live more sustainably is becoming more complicated all the time.

Last month, in a probably little-noticed post on its website, Hamilton City Council (HCC) urged residents of the city to “‘keep it clear’ when buying plastic bottles”. The post bluntly explains the reason is that “coloured plastic bottles… go to landfill,” then they elaborated:

Clear plastic bottles can be recycled up to nine times, which puts less stress on our environment to create more new plastic. Coloured plastic can be recycled, but dyes added to colour it, when its processed, it turns grey.

Terrible syntax aside, the stress on the environment isn’t mainly from creating new plastic: Making things from recycled plastic uses most of the same resources, like water and energy, for example. Instead, the main stress comes from disposing of plastic, especially in landfills—the very thing HCC is telling people it’s doing with some plastic.

As if that didn’t confuse things enough, they said:

Coloured plastic with the recycling label 2 (HDPE or janitorial plastic) is generally household cleaning, hygiene product and milk bottles. This plastic is mainly white and has a market to be recycled for wheelie bins and plant pots. However, coloured plastic 1 (PET or food grade plastic), in particular soft drink and sports drink bottles, is harder to recycle and doesn’t have a market. Without a market, it’s worthless.

So: Coloured plastic “can’t” be recycled, and so, it goes to landfill. Except for the coloured plastic that can be recycled and doesn’t go landfill. So glad they cleared that up!

The problem with creating such confusion is that it could easily encourage people to throw their hands up and stop their efforts to recycle at all. If that happens, it’ll be extremely difficult and expensive to get them to start again. HCC’s “Rubbish and Recycling Transitional Manager” said that they hope that there will be markets for the “1.2 tonnes of coloured plastic” Hamilton sends to landfill every year, but, in the meantime, “people can continue to put coloured plastic into their [recycling] bin.”

The issue here isn’t the plastic as such, it’s the economics: Companies have little incentive to increase use of recycled plastics, or to reduce the use of plastic, so they don’t. The two biggest drivers of change in this area are consumer demand and government regulation. The former is already high (but could be light years better—which is what HCC was ham-fistedly advocating), but regulation is sparse or missing altogether. New Zealand Governments led by both parties have resisted using regulations or taxes to force manufactures to change their ways, and the NZ Government is the only one with the power here, since governmental action like taxes and regulations aren't things that a NZ city council can impose, even if they wanted to. All of which means that fickle consumer demand is the only force available.

This isn't really about HCC itself—though you would think someone there could write a coherent message. The fact is, HCC's basic message, mangled though it was, had a laudable intent: Get people to act. If central Government fails to act—and it always has—and if corporations won’t do anything to fix the problem unless it’s in their own financial interest—and they won’t—then consumers are the ONLY thing that could force change.

This relates directly to my own efforts at sustainability, and in future posts I’ll have more to say about some new and very specific things I’m trying in the hope that it will reduce the amount of plastic packaging I have to get rid of (among other goals). In the meantime, I reuse what plastic packaging I can, but sooner or later everything has to go to be recycled or buried.

So, I’ll continue to place coloured plastics in the recycle bin until/unless they tell me I can’t, even if it goes to landfill. If I don’t, the only real alternative is to put it into the rubbish bin—and everything in that ends up in landfill, too, of course. Maybe one day there’ll be a market for the plastics no manufacturer seems to want, or maybe we’ll just dispose of less of it, but to make that happen, consumer demand cannot remain the only thing pushing for change. Government at all levels needs to play a part, too, and it’s way past time it did so.