James & Lynne
Lower Hutt · 2 people, 196 m² · Battery, EV, EV charger, Solar
I like the feeling that we are contributing to the community effort to reduce emissions.
$2,400 saved per year
What's in your electric home?
Almost everything. All appliances, tools and both vehicles are electric, except for a rarely used petrol powered weed-eater.
When did you start, and why?
I replaced my car with an EV about 2020, and upgraded to a newer longer range one after about three years. We installed solar PV plus battery along with a home 7kW Evnex charger in January 2025. We replaced our second car with another EV in mid-2025.
How much have you saved?
We have travelled about 100,000km in the two vehicles, going from about 8L/100km to 13kWh/100km in the Ioniq and then 18kWh/100km in the Polestar, which saw about $20k of petrol replaced with about $4k of electricity (some solar and some grid). We are now generating more power than we use in summer and 55% of our total power consumption since solar was installed.
What do you love most about it?
I like the feeling that we are contributing to the community effort to reduce emissions and the impact of climate change. I also feel pleased to be learning about local energy generation and management. The battery (Tesla Powerwall3) has a "storm mode" which will activate whenever a storm warning is issued for our location causing it to charge from the grid to 100% to be ready in case there is a grid outage. This proved really valuable over the winter when power was lost to our neighbourhood, but we were able to keep our house working.
How has it changed your behaviour?
We are more aware of how much energy we are using and when we use it. We are on a wholesale power plan which allows us to follow and understand the electricity market and what is driving power prices at different times of the day and week.
Any advice?
I encourage people to seek ways to understand how and when they use energy in their homes and lives, and to take advantage of freely available renewable energy from the environment.
Solar: 9.5 kW, 21 panels
Battery: 13 kWh
Vehicles: 2 EVs: Polestar 2 & Kia EV3