Sun shines on solar installers despite the failure of SolarZero

Thursday, 4 September 2025

Installers putting a SolarZero system in place on a home before its owner called in the liquidators in December.

The closure of SolarZero late last year delivered a hit to solar home installations, but businesses installing solar arrays to soften the blow of higher electricity prices report continued interest in the kit.

Analysis of government installation data by Harrisons Solar, which installs home and business solar systems, shows total capacity installed reached 665 MW last month, up 43% on the same time last year, and more than double the capacity of two years ago.

If that continued, the country would be on track to generate the equivalent amount of solar energy needed to power every home in the country within the next seven years, said Phil Harrison, managing director of Harrisons Solar.

“For the first time, we can realistically forecast a future where New Zealand will have enough solar capacity to power every home in the country,” he said.

Matt Ward, a strategic adviser at Harrisons, who was chief executive of SolarZero before its US owner BlackRock closed it, said there were still fewer solar systems being installed on house rooftops than before SolarZero’s demise, especially in Auckland and Wellington, where households were continuing to feel the pinch.

However, rural demand for solar installations had held up in rural areas buoyed by strong dairy pricing.

There had been strong growth in small and medium-sized systems being installed by businesses, which needed the power during office hours, Ward said.

Managing director of Lodestone Energy, Gary Holden, and Chair of Centralines Fenton Wilson speak about the project.

The boom in small and medium-sized businesses installing solar is partly driven by the high power prices - the same factor that appeared to have ended work on Amazon Web Services’ Fred Taylor Drive data centre, the development of which was supposed to be part of a $7.5 billion investment in New Zealand.

Ward felt the small and medium-sized business solar boom was driven in part by fixed rate power contracts some businesses had coming to an end, exposing them to higher power prices.

“I think that probably been a bit of a catalyst to investigate solar,” Ward said.

The Government’s “investment boost” tax breaks announced at the last budget certainly hadn’t hurt, he said.

The solar sector had also got a big boost by a report in June from the Energy efficiency and Conservation Authority Te Tari Tiaki Pūngao, which said solar was likely to be financially viable for a significant proportion of households, particularly for high power consumers.

It assessed the economics of solar for 47,000 households in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, and Queenstown, and found that rooftop solar was an investment that could provide internal rates of return above 8% and sometimes as high as 11% to 12%.

The report allows solar companies to start changing the way they talk about what they are offering, and Harrisons has started comparing possible returns with the returns people have been getting on their KiwiSaver funds.

EECA also rated the four cities by their solar potential. Queenstown came in first, with Auckland coming in next, followed by Christchurch, and Wellington, which has more cloudy days, coming fourth.

The Huntly Power Station burns coal and gas.

Harrison said in just under a year, New Zealand’s solar capacity would reach 953 MW, the equivalent generation of the coal-fired Huntly station.

There were now around 68,000 homes with solar systems, with an increasing number now having batteries installed so power could be used at night.

One of those who has a solar system on his home is dairy farmer, and investment manager Andrew Watters, however, he’s been involved in developing a model for small commercial generation.

Watters’ MyFarm Investments raised $17.7 million so far this year from wealthy wholesale investors for a solar fund to develop solar farms.

An artist's impression of what a MyFarm small-scale solar farm will look like.

Construction starts on its first 5MW farm in Ruakaka construction in September.

It has signed 10-year contracts with green hydrogen producer Hiringa Energy, which would see Hiringa buying 100% of the power generated from as many as five solar farms the two companies are planning to develop over the next two to three years.

This week it green-lighted the development of two 5MW solar-to-hydrogen farms

Harrison said: “We’re seeing a fundamental shift in how New Zealanders engage with energy.

“As more homes generate and store their own power, we’re moving toward a decentralised electricity system, one that’s more resilient, less reliant on the grid during peak times, and better equipped to handle disruptions,” he said.

Future power pricing moves by the Government could boost the economics of solar systems with batteries, Ward said.

“One of their initiatives is to introduce ‘time of use’ rates. Once you start to see those become a bit more ubiquitous, the economics for batteries will improve because you'll see a differentiation between peak and off-peak pricing,” he said.