Luke Nutting has spent the past decade preparing for the solar energy wave. When the British electrician arrived here 12 years ago, he’d spent a couple of years in Australia watching the industry, sparked by government subsidies, take off. In New Zealand, by contrast, “there wasn't a solar panel in sight”.

Since then, Lightforce, the Uptown-based company he founded with marketing expert and scientist Kat Rundle, has been responsible for around 20% of the country’s rooftop solar installations – and he knows it’s barely begun. Only 1.6% of New Zealand households have solar panels.

“It’s very much in its infancy, compared to over the ditch,” says Luke. “It’s at 28% in Australia, and there are massive numbers in Europe. So we’re literally at the start of the journey, which is pretty exciting.”

Growth here so far has been driven by the increasingly attractive economics of going solar – most notably in the cost and performance of batteries to store electricity generated during the day. An installation with a battery will pay for itself over 10 years and without a battery that could be as little as five years. The move to working from home – and using energy as it’s produced – is also changing the equation. Then there’s the growth in the EV market: later this year bidirectional charging will become available, allowing owners to use their cars as

batteries that can store energy and deliver it back to the household as required.

Although government subsidies led to rapid growth in Australia, there were some downsides: notably a rush of “cowboys” into the business and a dive in the quality of installations. Lightforce recently took steps to make sure the skilled labour is here for what Luke expects will be a “tipping point” in the next year or two by working with the Ministry of Social Development to establish the new Lightforce Training Academy across the road from the company’s Edwin Street office.

“It's colourful, it’s bright, it’s got neon signs,” says Kat. “We’ve got the classrooms upstairs and the practical space downstairs where we’ve built a mock roof where the students can come and learn how to install solar. So we don’t have a labour shortage when that tipping point comes. But it’s not just teaching students how to put panels on roofs, it’s about the future of energy and what that looks like and what opportunities there are in that space.”

This is a company with a philosophy. You’ll see sustainability messaging around the Lightforce office, there’s a fine for anyone who brings in a single-use coffee (the money goes to charity), and the company recently got its own carbon-neutral certification.

“Certification was a non-negotiable for us,” says Kat. “As was the intent, our carbon reduction journey also gave us an insight into how the way we do business has an impact on the environment. So it was really important that we became carbon neutral operationally as a business.”

Although current rooftop installations are overwhelmingly on existing buildings, there’s also vast potential for shared solar installations on new, high-density buildings, something that may become attractive as Uptown fills in with new housing.

There’s a bigger dream for Luke and Kat, one reflected in the various community enterprises their company supports.



“Solar is the future, but how can we use solar for good?” says Kat. “There’s so much potential there, both socially and environmentally.”

“There are 100,000 homes in power poverty in New Zealand,” adds Luke. “People that literally can't pay their power bill. If we could somehow fund solar systems to help those people, get them out of power poverty, that’d be a pretty amazing thing to do.”