Current Pilot

Preamble

Waiheke Island has long been a testing ground for sustainable energy innovation. From early household installations to the pioneering Our Energy pilot, the community has consistently led the way in demonstrating how local solutions can support global change.

Building on this foundation, WE Share is now entering a new phase of collaborative rollout — with key collaboration partners SEANZ, Our Energy, Ecotricity, Vector and the Waiheke community.

Together with our key partners as the next stage of WE Share’s ongoing commitment to providing accessible solar, we are seeking to facilitate & deploy an additional 50 solar and battery systems across the island. This is more than an installation campaign — it’s a technical and social proof-of-concept for a locally coordinated, community-benefit Virtual Power Plant (VPP).

Pilot Highlights

  • 50 PV + Battery Systems being installed
  • Community-led principlesat every stage: from participant selection to governance design
  • Technical integrationinto a coordinated Virtual Power Plant (VPP) platform
  • Collaboration with multiple industry and community partners
  • Foundation for wider replicationon Waiheke and beyond, and potential reference cases nationally
  • Prioritize inclusion of diverse household typesand ensure accessibility for those most in need

Intended Outcomes

Cost & Access

  • Understand further opportunities for reducing costs and increasing accessibility
  • Explore funding mechanisms to enable mass community uptake and broader accessibility
  • Refine and lower the costs of solar and battery installations through collective deployment
  • Enable bulk purchasing of high-quality, trusted solar components to improve affordability and reliability

Infrastructure & Technical Development

  • Establish the technical infrastructure requirements between customers, energy retailers, and lines companies to enable full VPP functionality and future scalability

Governance & Collaboration

  • Develop critical working relationships with key stakeholders to enable realistic, coordinated long-term outcomes
  • Establish a collaborative working understanding between WE Share, Our Energy, and SEANZ to identify clear pathways for serving community interests in alignment with shared values and capacities

Learning, Feedback & Replication

  • Gather detailed technical, financial, and social data to inform decision-making and refine the VPP model
  • Inform the development of the WE Share Blueprint and long-term governance frameworks with real-world lessons from the pilot

Evaluation & Scaling

  • Evaluation indicators will include installation performance, participant satisfaction, and social & economic impact metrics

 

This is Version 1.0 of the pilot summary. It will be updated as new phases unfold and community engagement deepens.

We invite the Waiheke community to continue shaping this journey with us — through feedback, participation, and collaboration.

This rollout will continue through late 2025, with public updates at key milestones.