A small suburban house is one step closer to energy self-sufficiency.
St John's resident Mai Digby watched as an energy monitoring system was installed at her house this week. Digby said her house would soon be like a small power station.
Digby's 8-year-old son Damian was delighted. "Every day he's been coming down and looking at the box." It was tech-savvy Damian who urged Mai to enter the Right House solar-panel contest in the Herald on Sunday.
The photovoltaic panel could generate 4160kw a year, potentially slashing the family power bill in half. Digby said she'd use savings to help pay off her student loan. She studied for a diploma in business administration at MIT in 2011.
The monitoring equipment will be connected to the Splash website, which gives real-time updates. Splash Monitoring shows how much power is generated, and what that power equates to, in terms of household tasks such as boiling cups of tea or cooking toast. A similar system at SkyCity has generated enough energy to power a three-person house for seven years.
