Solar power is a no-brainer for Jonas from Circus Coffee. Photo: Ted Baghurst
Solar power is a no-brainer for Jonas from Circus Coffee. Photo: Ted Baghurst
Step right up! You won’t believe your eyes! Free energy for all! Gavin Healy takes a wild ride through an exploding technology.
The Lucky Star caravan café and its staff in their circus attire are a kaleidoscope of colour. Extending from the vintage caravan, complete with three ceramic ducks, is a pop-up retro furnished living room. Here a family dressed as rabbits sip green smoothies while watching a hula hoop lazily circle the hips of girl wearing a psychedelic skeleton costume. Ambient music floats from a marquee, and under its eves a serene crowd practice 'Yoga Rhythms' under the dual influence of a yoga teacher and a DJ.
This surreal experience is my first morning at Sundaise, a relatively new three-day music, arts and sustainability festival, nestled in the beautiful Dicky Flats at Waihi. It's a family friendly event which merges nature, workshops, a magnificent kid's zone, art installations, quality food, wacky costumes, and a great line up of live music and DJs. It also boasts a 97% diversion of waste from landfill, 100% compostable toilets, and a stage run entirely by solar power. In a nutshell, if you're a greenie and you love music you must experience Sundaise.
Jonas, Circus Coffee, Sundaise Festival, Waihi. Photo by Ted Baghurst.
Jonas Karsten, the owner of the Lucky Star, resplendent in a ring master's jacket, denim cut-offs and little else, sits beside me and comments on the quality of the sound system - even though it's cloudy.
Jonas is a solar PV enthusiast originally from Bonn, Germany but living in Taranaki for over 14 years. He spends a lot of the year travelling around New Zealand to festivals in a bus that looks like a hybrid between Mad Max and Caption Hook. The three solar panels on the roof add to the theatrical spectacle, while also charging a battery bank that runs the lights, water pump and appliances.
"We adapted well to using little amounts of power living in our mobile home so it made perfect sense to use the same concept on our house. All our lights are LED and there is a very efficient DC fridge. Most people don't read the energy labels on appliances and would be very surprised how little energy efficient things like washing machines actually consume." Jonas continued by rattling off the exact energy consumption of a myriad of appliances he uses.
"It was also cheaper to setup a small stand-alone solar system, with additional wind power at home, than to hook up to the grid and pay line charges for most of the year, when we are away travelling and working."
The curved roof of the Lucky Star Café is also discreetly covered in thin flexible solar panels. "They are charging a 440 ah battery bank which is then converted to 240V by a Xantrex 2400W inverter." Basically the flexible panels powered most of the appliances in the café: a juicer at 1100w, blenders at 650w, coffee grinder at 350w, machine electrics at 400w, Led lights at 25w, paging system at 10w, and a sound system sometimes cranked up to 350w. The espresso machine - which made a glorious cuppa - was powered by gas.
"I wanted to have a self-sufficient setup that could be operated any time at the flick of a switch. I also wanted to showcase the ease of solar set-ups and to inspire other people to get away from using petrol-burning, noisy generators. It seems so wrong to bring dirty generators to places like this."
The ring master was obviously a solar master too. He had even installed a 6kW system on his parents' home in Germany. "My brother and I completed the whole installation - right down to the grid-tie hook-up which had to be certified by an electrician. "It was very straightforward. Prices are slightly cheaper here in NZ but don't buy cheap grid-tie inverters or regulators as they are always the weak link."
The major difference with his parents' system was that they were guaranteed 0.15 Euro for every kW they pumped back into the grid, while here in NZ there is little support from the Government to support the market. The German government's investment was also really apparent to Jonas: "Councils are using solar everywhere to cut their own operational costs alongside roads and bridges. It's fantastic to see."
Solar power in Germany accounted for an estimated 6.9 per cent of the country's net-electricity generation in 2014 compared to 0.1% in New Zealand. About 1.4 million photovoltaic systems are installed in Germany from small roof-top systems to gigantic utility-scale solar parks. Yet Germany has a just a fraction of the solar energy in terms of favourable sun conditions compared to New Zealand.
Solar panel prices in New Zealand have dropped 75% in the last five years. People can now invest in solar simply for a ROI that is better than the bank can offer.
A study in 2o12 from SEANZ showed that solar was already competitive with mainstream energy and that panels' solar cell efficiency (ability to covert sunlight into energy) is increasing every year. Accordingly the Kiwi economy experienced 330% growth in the solar industry in the last 3 years and, according to researchers Nielsen Media, 28,000 people intend to install solar over the next 12 months. Meanwhile in the US over the past four years there has been an 86% increase in jobs to cope with demand, with over 174,000 people now employed by the solar industry - it's a bigger employer than the oil industry already. Solar is looking great from a business perspective.
Globally we are seeing an enormous increase in solar power and cleantech investment. Data from Bloomberg New Energy Finance states that clean tech investment soared 16% in 2014 to $310bn. This is a step in the right direction but we need to leap. According to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), that needs to increase to 1 trillion by 2030 to stay within the safe 2c rise in global temperatures.
Solar-powered sounds at a festival in the Bay of Plenty. Photo: supplied.
Solar sounds
The PA and lighting system for Sundaise was powered by Sunsonics, a mobile, off-grid, solar audio and visual system. It has a large battery bank of stored power that ensures it runs right through the night without the need for a generator, and was founded by Al Sorley. "It shows that solar can exceed industry aspirations in power excellence, with large capacity storage and generation, providing pure sine wave; the cleanest power, plus no noise and no stinky diesel. It's obviously mobile, and offers a real solution to the events industry's sustainability needs, explains Sorley. Just last week Sunsonics ran a 6000W PA and full band, as well as blow-up cinema, PA and projector at Earth Hour, held in Mount Maunganui.
