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Speaker 1: Seven away from it. So Loadstone Energy has become our

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Speaker 1: us to electricity retailer. There's a solar focused company that's

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Speaker 1: been supplying the market through third parties. The managing director

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Speaker 1: Gary Holdens with us on this Gary Morning.

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Speaker 2: Good morning.

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Speaker 1: How are you so if you're I'm well, thank you.

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Speaker 1: So if you if you do generation and now you're

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Speaker 1: going to retailer, that makes you a gin Tyler, does it?

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Speaker 2: I guess we are a miniature version of a gentil. Yes.

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Speaker 1: How big are you in terms of solo? How much

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Speaker 1: do you produce?

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Speaker 2: POWI was, well, we were building our fifth solar farm,

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Speaker 2: and and so we we've got a plan to do

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Speaker 2: you know, between ten and twenty solar farms in the

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Speaker 2: next four or five years. So we so we are

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Speaker 2: just starting, but we you know, the energy off of

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Speaker 2: five solar farms would power all of the houses in

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Speaker 2: say a city the size of Hamilton.

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Speaker 1: That's not bad going. How big are these solar farms?

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Speaker 1: How many panels we're talking about each farm?

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Speaker 2: Roughly? Well, each one's about fifty or sixty million dollars

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Speaker 2: and they hold anywhere between fifty and eighty thousand solar panels,

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Speaker 2: So they're pretty. They're pretty they're pretty ambitious projects, and

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Speaker 2: they can create quite a lot of energy over the year.

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Speaker 1: How much difficulty do you run in locally with people

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Speaker 1: going I think that's ugly council's paperwork red type that

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Speaker 1: is it easy or not?

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Speaker 2: Oh, it's been pretty easy. I think the key is

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Speaker 2: we don't we don't try to make them too big.

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Speaker 2: We you know, you can make them as big as

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Speaker 2: you want, and so we we try to tuck them

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Speaker 2: into substation areas behind hedgerows. We sort of have this

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Speaker 2: vision that every community will ultimately have its own solar

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Speaker 2: farm and maybe a battery pack in the future, and

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Speaker 2: so so making them big is not our plan. Our

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Speaker 2: plan is to scatter them all over the country and

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Speaker 2: make them small and digestible, and you know, and if

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Speaker 2: you tuck them in behind hedgerow, they kind of disappear.

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Speaker 1: Sure, what's your what's your supply demand ratio? In the

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Speaker 1: sense that you don't want to take on so many

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Speaker 1: customers that you know, when you can't produce enough power

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Speaker 1: to supply, what do you go to with the you

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Speaker 1: can get the power to back it up to guarantee

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Speaker 1: me as the customer.

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Speaker 2: Well effectively, what we do is we kind of over

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Speaker 2: sell the panels to a customer like you do on

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Speaker 2: your like you would put on your house, you'd probably

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Speaker 2: put a little bit more than you need for those

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Speaker 2: days when you know, you generate a little bit too

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Speaker 2: much and send it into the grid and then at

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Speaker 2: nighttime you pull it back out of the grid. And

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Speaker 2: so we kind of rely on the hydro system being

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Speaker 2: a big, huge battery, so we overgenerate in the middle

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Speaker 2: of the day, but we take it back at night.

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Speaker 2: Through the through the mechanisms in the market.

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Speaker 1: You see solar as the future as opposed to win

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Speaker 1: or hydro will soar.

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Speaker 2: Solar is way cheaper and it can be put pretty

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Speaker 2: much anywhere where there's sunshine, and you know they're parts

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Speaker 2: of the country they are less attractive than others, but

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Speaker 2: most places in New Zealand are quite attractive. And and

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Speaker 2: it you know, you can install a solar farm in

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Speaker 2: eight or nine months as opposed to a big, huge

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Speaker 2: wind project that takes several years. And so it's really

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Speaker 2: it's really convenient and easy to build a business around

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Speaker 2: something you can put together so quickly.

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Speaker 1: Always good talk to you, appreciate it.

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Speaker 2: Go well.

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Speaker 1: Gary Holden our Loadstone Energy Managing Director, more supplies what

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Speaker 1: we want, and he's supplying more supply, which is good

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