Future’s bright for solar

With the help of government agency Toitū Envirocare he came to realise his business could be sustainable both environmentally and financially. 

He used a bank “Green Loan” to finance putting the panels on the roof and taking out asbestos at the same time.

Now he should be able to be power neutral with any surplus power produced going to the grid. 

“At 48 kilowatts there is enough power to run the business and on a bright sunny day it will reach around 60 kilowatts,” he says.

Enviro process 

“With Toitū Envirocare we had to look at our footprint and we looked at our rubbish and what we were doing with it put systems in place,” he says. 

Toitū helped him develop a plan and suggested what steps he needed to take to be viable as a business and sustainable at the same time. 

First up in the process was replacing the lighting in the workshop from dozens of heavy-duty industrial lights that hummed when they were turned on, to LED’s. 

“The old lights were $250 dollars each and the LEDs are $500 each, and they will last longer than the old-style ones. Each one is eight cents an hour less to run compared to old ones.” 

Steam grooming solution 

For grooming cars once they are repaired, Neil looked at putting in a double wash-bay with twin tanks which was going to cost $43,000 but soon discovered a better and more cost-effective option was to buy a steamer for around $10,000.  

And there were big savings to be made with the steamer using only three litres to wash a car, rather than the eight to 10 litres of water it would take to wash a car with water, and no detergents are needed, just a microfibre cloth. 

“The main thing to remember when you are trying to be sustainable is, does it work for you, is it something that is an advantage to your business”? Neil says. 

“There are things you might love to have but if it is going to put you out of business then what is the point?”