A new dawn? A look at the history of solar technology in New Zealand.

A new dawn?

CINDY JEMMETT

Every year, 15–30 times more solar energy shines on New Zealand rooftops than each home uses in electricity and gas. But how best to harness and store it? This is an engineering question but also a political one. Solar technology is centuries old, but the motivation to develop and incorporate it into our lives is socially, economically and politically driven.

Photovoltaic cells have their origin in 1839 when French physicist Edmond Becquerel observed that some materials created an electrical charge when exposed to light. In the 1880s, American inventor Charles Fritts created the first commercial solar panels. These early solar cells were very inefficient and could not compete with coal and other fossil fuels which were cheap and readily available.

In 20th century New Zealand, interest and enthusiasm for solar energy has surged and waned in response to the cost and dependability of our national electricity supply.

From the mid-1960s, articles began appearing in Engineering New Zealand’s then-journal, New Zealand Engineering, discussing the potential of harnessing solar energy. Our demand for energy is increasing and fossil fuels are finite, the articles warned. Solar water heating and space heating were identified as the two most cost-effective and easily implemented solar solutions.

Experimental solar water heaters were installed in two state rental houses in Auckland and one in Porirua East in 1959. The units halved the water heating costs at these properties, but despite this success, uptake remained slow. “Solar houses” (today known as passive solar design) were also a source of curious interest in New Zealand from the 1960s. This went hand in hand with calls for wider recognition of the benefits of insulation.

It was not until the oil shocks of the 1970s that solar water and space heating gathered further interest and uptake. In 1981, Graham Stevens, environmental design lecturer at the University of Auckland’s School of Architecture, wrote hopefully that the principles of passive solar architecture could be applied to any new building in New Zealand at little or no extra cost and that many older buildings could be retrofitted. Photovoltaic cells also got a boost in the 1970s. Investment in their development saw cells become more efficient and cheaper to produce. By 1975, silicon cells were achieving an efficiency rate of 12–14 percent. As oil prices stabilised, uptake of solar energy waned. By 1984, Graham’s optimism about the uptake of solar house design had faded and he felt that “95 percent of people just don’t give a damn at present”.

Reflecting on the energy upheaval of the 1970s, the authors of a 1988 paper given at a New Zealand climate change seminar asked: What are our responsibilities, as citizens, scientists and engineers? They argued that energy efficiency and solar options would not be widely introduced if left to market forces because the dollar price paid for fossil fuels did not reflect the environmental cost. Nor would any technical solution serve us for long if we continued to use and produce more and more.

A decade later, not much had changed. Solar energy was still alternative rather than mainstream and as a 1999 article commented, New Zealand’s gas burning power stations were providing relatively cheap power, their carbon dioxide emissions not costing anything to the station owner or power consumer. In the late 1990s, approximately 800–1,000 solar water heating units were installed each year, about 1.5 percent of the total annual hot water system sales. Photovoltaic cells were economic in remote locations, but in cities many homeowners still considered the set-ups costs to be too high.

Solar water heating, passive design and solar panels are today still largely alternative technologies and not something the average homeowner would consider as a matter of course. History shows us that innovation and implementation come at times of pressure when to continue with the status quo is more painful than making changes. As creative thinkers, engineers have a role and a responsibility to not only design technical solutions but to reimagine how we live, to help us build a closer relationship with our environment and to realise a future where we consume less.

Cindy Jemmett is Heritage Advisor at Te Ao Rangahau.

Solar heating panels, and installer Colin Doughty, on the roof of the Eastbourne swimming pool, Lower Hutt. Photograph taken circa November 1981 by Merv Griffiths. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, Ref: EP/1981/3783/8-F.