Two newly-built solar farms in Willowby, Ashburton, are giving power back to their communities - literally and figuratively.
Since Christmas Eve, the farms have generated 1,446,451 kilowatt hours of energy - that’s enough to power 180 houses for an entire year.
It’s considered a “medium-sized,” community scale solar farm, Lightyears Solar co-founder and general manager of development Matt Shanks said.
“With these community-sized ones, you could have [a farm] on the outskirts of every town in New Zealand.”
The panels span an eight-hectare stretch of leased lifestyle land, and should generate 7.2 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 1800 homes annually.
Since the panels are raised off of the ground, livestock can still graze the paddock.
“They’ve been running around the paddock since the sparkies have come in, and seem to be getting on fine.”
Lightyears Solar has built three farms in the country so far - one here, one in Masterton and another in Waiuku, near Auckland.
Ecotricity, who buy the farm’s energy and trade it on the market, see it as a chance to break the oligopoly on power in New Zealand.
“Historically, energy generation has been kept to really big sites, like hydro sites or wind farms, and are owned by only a few players - the ‘gentailers’,” solar group manager Luis Porto said.
“But solar comes to disrupt that traditional model, because you can set it up in any scenario - from a household, to a commercial rooftop or a paddock.”
“There’s not enough electricity in New Zealand, full stop, and you can see that through electricity pricing,” Shanks said.
“We’ve got the ability to create new solar farms and increase the availability of electricity in New Zealand, while also doing it from a renewable source.”
There are two separate solar farms on the site, one owned by Lightyears Solar, and the other is owned by RCR Green Development.

by Anisha Satya