Living "GridFree" - sounds interesting! So right now on the line to uh give us some more about it,
we're talking to Craig Simpson - good morning Craig. "Morena!" Hey now uh I suppose the big
question is, what is GridFree? "Yeah let me give you the back story! So I'm an Aucklander,
decided I needed to get away from Aucklanders, so I bought myself a property up north,
and it was just a blank property cut off an old farm. So I rang up Northpower and said "Can I
get the power on?" and the guy said "Oh yeah about ninety thousand dollars," and I was like,
can't do that. So I thought, oh well, I'll get solar maybe. So I phoned around some
solar companies and they'll either do it for you for like 30 grand, or you've got to try and work
it out yourself. And so I thought oh, well I can climb a ladder I can use a screwdriver,
I'll work it out myself. But then nobody wanted to help me about what equipment went together,
and how it went, and where you could get it, good pricing etc. So my son, who's an electrical
engineer, I said "Can you help me?" so he helped me and we built a system. And then I went,
you know, I wonder how many other people have this problem? We had another guy working for us,
Zed, and his dad does business in China and Zed speaks mandarin, and I said "Zed, all this stuff
comes out of China, you reckon we could get kits in here and see if people will buy them?"
So what we decided was, why don't we pull together everything that you need to do it yourself and get
solar and go off-grid yourself. And do it from the start, like if you've got a little place then
there's a couple of panels some batteries. So we did this, and we put it on TradeMe, and they sold
like crazy. And that was three years ago, and now we do three million dollars and we've got a big
warehouse in Wiri - it took off right?" So remote living, like bush if you are.. what about maraes?
"Yeah! I tell you what, we sell a heap of them to Māori, right? There's a lot of people that
have land that they've had for a long time, and some of them joke with us that everybody lives by
the road because that's where the power is," Yeah. "But they've got a lot of land, right?! So we sell
a lot to marae, and people that are going back to the land, and they want to build a building
somewhere that's more convenient, and only need enough power to run some lights, and run a fridge
and a freezer and, they can do the rest off the LPG right. So we can get you all the gear and
the instructions - how to do it, how to set it up. We've got all these pictures and we'll help you,
so that you can climb a ladder, put the brackets on the roof, put the cables through the wall - we
pre-crimp the tables - put it all together yourself, and we can get you into something for
a few thousand dollars to start. And then if you if you've got a heaps of whanau then maybe
you would buy a bigger kit, and they'd go up to sort of.. 20 grand, and that would give you
enough to run a whole house." Alright, so I'd say I'd imagine the savings, once you've got it
all plugged in, I mean the savings will be pretty huge really. "Oh yeah yeah yeah, like if you get
someone to come out and install solar for you it probably starts at about 30 grand, right? Because
they've got to meet all these requirements and there's just so much and there's so much labour
involved that the price goes through the roof and then they make a big margin on the gear. So,
we have some that start at like four or five grand, right? And if you're willing to change
your life a little bit, you can get by. Like I've got two panels on my cabin up at my place
and I've got a couple of batteries, and I run a fridge and I boil a jug and I run my lights and
I charge my phone and then I get a couple of LPG bottles that I just swap when i go into town."
So if you're already, say you've already got power set up, is it easy to make the switch from already
having your power supply and everything, to going GridFree? "I tell you what, if you're
already connected to the power, the numbers don't really add up. Pretty much 100% of our customers
are people that want power to a part of their land that they can't get power to, because just getting
the power connected from the power company - even if you're right by the power pole - is 10 grand.
So generally we sell to people that don't have power connected, or if they want to put the
building further up the hill or something, and then if they have to run power poles,
it's like a hundred grand to put power up there. So those are our customers, people that have
no power and and want power. And I'll tell you what, we sell a heap around the east cape there!"
Sure would! Hey Craig, so if we do want to, how do we go about getting these services?
"Go to www.gridfree.co.nz and you'll either talk to me, Ethan or Zed. Just go and have
a quick look there, the phone number and all the details will be there."