A Timaru solar installer says neither Labour's nor National's proposed home solar subsidy schemes go far enough to offset the real cost of installation, as both parties court voters with competing energy policies ahead of the election.

Terry Patterson, who installs solar panels in the Timaru area, told RNZ's Morning Report that a typical home installation costs between $22,000 and $27,000 — far more than either party's proposed assistance would cover RNZ.

A standard residential system needs roughly five kilowatts of generation capacity, Patterson said. That translates to about 15 to 16 panels, an inverter, wiring, and in some cases a switchboard upgrade — line items that add up well beyond the headline subsidy figures either party has put forward.

Labour unveiled its SolarSaver package this week, a $160 million policy aimed at reducing power bills 1News. The scheme has two main planks: Crown-underwritten loans issued through lines companies and repaid via power bills, and a $3,000 kickstart subsidy for low and middle-income families installing solar RNZ. Labour has said the goal is to double the number of New Zealand houses with rooftop solar Facebook/NZ Labour Party. An earlier account of the policy from Carbon News described grants of up to $4,000 per household, split between $2,000 for panels and $2,000 for a battery, though the figures confirmed this week by RNZ and 1News put the kickstart subsidy at $3,000 Carbon News.

Patterson said $3,000 "isn't enough to meaningfully help" against installation costs running into the tens of thousands. He was similarly unconvinced by the renter-focused element of Labour's package, which would let renters use the kickstart subsidy toward plug-in solar units. Those devices, he said, generate only 600 to 1,000 watts — enough to run a fridge or a similar single appliance, not to materially offset a household's grid consumption.

National's competing offer, the Home Energy Fund, provides low-interest loans covering solar panels, batteries and insulation, repaid through rates rather than power bills National Party RNZ. National MP Simeon Brown promoted the fund on Instagram on 24 June, saying it would let households avoid the upfront cost of solar installation Instagram/Simeon Brown. Unlike Labour's package, National's fund is not solar-specific — it bundles solar with other home energy efficiency measures, and repayment through rates rather than a subsidy means homeowners still carry the full installation cost, just spread over time.

Patterson's central technical point concerns battery storage, which he described as critical to solar economics — particularly for households away from home during the day. Export tariffs paid to solar customers who feed excess generation back into the grid sit at 8 to 12 cents per kilowatt hour, he said, against retail power prices of 34 to 38 cents per kilowatt hour for standard consumption. Without a battery to store daytime generation for evening use, that price gap erodes much of the financial case for going solar in the first place. Neither party's core subsidy explicitly prioritises battery storage at the scale Patterson says is needed, though Labour's now-referenced $2,000 battery component and National's Home Energy Fund both allow battery costs to be included.

Patterson pointed to Australia's uptake of home battery storage as a point of comparison, citing roughly 450,000 battery installations there over the prior 12 months. He said installation activity in his own Timaru-area customer base continues but at a slower pace than previously, even as some customers report power bills well over $1,000 a month.

The competing policies follow earlier regulatory moves on solar. In mid-2025, the government proposed changes to the Building Act to clarify that building consent is not required for rooftop solar installation RNZ — a change aimed at cutting a different kind of cost, the compliance overhead rather than the capital outlay Patterson is describing.

The gap between Patterson's installer-level cost data and the subsidy figures both major parties are campaigning on is not, on its face, a partisan dispute — it's an arithmetic one. Whether Crown-backed loans repaid through power bills (Labour) prove more attractive to households than rates-repaid loans bundled with insulation (National) will likely turn on interest rates, repayment terms and eligibility criteria that neither party has yet fully detailed. For an installer working with customers on fixed incomes and existing four-figure power bills, the more immediate question is simpler: whether either scheme closes the gap between a $3,000-to-$4,000 subsidy and a $22,000-to-$27,000 job.