Video Interview with Gary Singh of The Clean Crew

Gary Singh is the owner of  The Clean Crew, a local cleaning business.

Gary and his team have been busy looking at new opportunities post lockdown but it was his wife that he turned to for support and advice and to ensure he was on the right track.

The Clean Crew’s business was impacted by Covid19 with many commercial offices closed but Gary and the team used the time to develop new products and services, particularly around sanitation and some exciting AI technology.

Here’s today’s 15 minute catch up with Gary.

 

Video Interview – Stacia Jenson of Lilybee Wrap

Stacia Jenson of LilyBee Wrap has been juggling parenting and working from home over the last several weeks.

Stacia said communication was vital during lockdown, but fortunately her business trips back to the US over the last few years to promote Lilybee Wraps, was a good practice run to working in isolation. Here’s our quick 15 minute interview with her.

Video interview with Katie Nimon of Nimon & Sons

Nimons Transport is an iconic Hawke’s Bay business that has already survived 3 significant economic downturns. The business has been massively impacted by Covid19 – its fleet of buses has been grounded and some of its staff was also exposed to Covid due to a cruise ship visit to Hawke’s Bay.

Katie provides an insight into the impact on the family business and how it will have to adapt going forward due to tourism coming to a stand still and events also being closed to large scale spectator numbers.

 

Video Interview – 15 minutes with Tobias Taylor.

Tobias Taylor is the chief executive of Midlands Mortgage Trust. The fund has $52 million in loans out on $120 m in security, so he says the firm has a lot of head room in its asset allocation. He says once you talk to your investor clients in the numbers and facts – they’re pretty happy to continue to get a regular investment return that’s above the banks.

Tobias says Hawke’s Bay’s economy will hurt later in the year, but he’s optimistic that it won’t be as bad as elsewhere in the country. Here’s the quick 15 minute catch up with Tobias.

 

Video Series – a quick catch up with Carl Leipst

Our latest episode of our quick fire interviews with local business owners has just landed.

Carl Leipst is the owner of Diva Bar and part owner of The Loading Ramp in Havelock North. He’s also a board member of the Havelock North Business Association. Carl’s businesses have been closed entirely during lockdown.

Interviews brought to you by Business Central.

To view click below

Video series – 15 minute interview with Ben Firman – HB App

Our 2nd episode of our quick fire interviews with local business owners has just landed. We are going the interviews in association with Business Central.

Ben Firman owns Engage Media and HB App with John Norris. The dynamic duo like us were forced home to work and their business has been impacted due to not being able to video events such as sport games and concerts.

To find out more click below

 

Video series – a catch up with Hamish White – NOW

Over the next couple of weeks we are going to interview local business people on how Covid 19 had an impact on their businesses and how they adopted their products and services for their customers.

The interview series is supported by Business Central and is done in-conjunction with HB App. Our first interview is with Hamish White from NOW – our local telecommunications business. Hamish says the business was pretty well prepared for Covid – starting a project earlier in March to have staff operating from home.

Hamish provides a great insight into how the business coped with the surge in internet traffic in what he calls the early morning rush – similar to being on the motorway. Click below to watch the interview.

Energy sector will experience mega trends

Ken Sutherland has been the Unison chief executive for over a decade. In 2011 Ken was the inaugural winner of the Profiteers for his strong leadership of our local lines company. Over the last decade there have been changes within the energy sector but Ken sees some megatrends starting to emerge.

What’s likely to change in the energy sector?

An unprecedented level of change is already underway in the energy sector. While some movement will be felt this decade, it is expected the profound impact will happen over the next 30 years. Three major megatrends are driving the change:

1. New consumer technology, which is increasing the options for consumers to produce, store and use electricity in new ways;

2. The rise in consumers who actively engage with their electricity supply;

3. Sustainability and the requirement to meet climate change objectives: minimising our environmental impact, integrating more renewable sources of energy and mitigating the impact climate change has on our landscapes and consequently our network assets.

Although New Zealand already has a highly renewable electricity sector, there is a massive opportunity for New Zealand to harness its significant potential to ramp this up more to support a rapid transition to electric vehicles and reduce our reliance on imported petrol and diesel for our transport fleet.

The big challenge for the electricity sector is how the industry and policy-makers can facilitate this change, without putting pressure on costs and prices of electricity. The biggest risk we see is that well-intended Government policies, such as the ban on gas exploration, lead to undesired consequences, such as needing to keep the coal-fired Huntly power station going much longer to deal with times where there is not much wind or sun, and the hydro-lakes are low.

We look across at Australia and see decades of failed electricity market policies, where politicians have made targeted interventions that have had really bad outcomes for consumers, with massive increases in prices and much greater risks of unreliable power supplies. Rather than picking winners, our hope is that the Government here will just make it expensive to emit CO2 and the generators will be highly motivated to invest in the right kinds of renewable power generation.

But along the way, New Zealand will have to make some tough choices. We all love our wide-open spaces and majestic mountains, but if we want more renewables and we want some of our biggest energy users to convert to electricity we will have to learn to accept more windmills and electricity infrastructures on our horizons. There isn’t going to be any easy solutions that don’t involve making tough trade-offs.

The challenge for the energy sector is the uncertainty surrounding the change. The pace and exact nature of future technology and consumer behaviour is unknown and difficult to predict. We need to plan and develop our network and operations in a way that maintains flexibility to meet future demands, while continuing to provide a reliable and cost-effective supply of electricity to all our customers.

What technology advancements will have an impact on how Unison does business?

We have a key role to play in supporting consumers to adopt new technology in the future and ultimately consumers should be able to connect any new electrical technology they wish to the network, provided the cost is appropriate and the technology is safe, reliable and does not adversely impact the quality of electricity supply.

As solar, battery and EVs continue to become more popular and affordable, people will use our electricity network in different ways. We need to consider how our network will handle peak loads, greater solar PV, battery usage and the charging of EVs. We also need to ensure devices do not have a negative impact on the quality of the electricity supply, by ensuring new technologies are meeting the minimum technical connection standards. A deterioration in the quality of electricity supply can cause appliances in the home to fail and ultimately restrict the number of solar, battery and EVs to be connected to the network.

Network adaptation goes hand in hand with pricing reform. Traditional pricing methods, based on per kWh charges that do not change during the course of a day, are not fit for purpose. As more people change their energy use, current pricing will increase resulting in inequitable outcomes.

Unison is already working towards pricing reform with a goal for reform that promotes consumer choice and is more reflective of the networks costs and services customers receive. We want to ensure that our consumers are not left disadvantaged in the long term as our industry adapts and evolves.

In the future, people might want to select a level of electricity capacity that suits their lifestyle, in the same way that people currently purchase a data limit on their broadband service. Or they might prefer a time of use charge, whereby if they know electricity costs less during times when the network is used less, such as overnight, they could run some appliances or recharge their cars overnight.

The views of our customers matter to us and we are prioritising our engagement with them, continuing to seek their opinions and encourage them to have their say, so we can learn more about their expectations and requirements from us. In January this year we started the first of a regular series of consumer interviews and focus groups to get feedback and opinions on electricity use and pricing and this customer engagement will continue to be a priority as we evolve our business.

Is there an Uber/Airbnb transformation within your sector/profession?

Absolutely. That would be an open network, often referred to as a distributed energy network.

Traditionally electricity has flowed in one direction across the network from the national grid to distributors to customers. Future technologies will require networks to be capable of supporting two-way flows of energy.

If you think about it, the success of Uber and Air BnB are that they provide consumers who have spare capacity, (an under-utilised car or spare bedroom) with the ability to monetise that spare capacity through an easy to use platform – apps. Sophisticated pricing models are used to allocate that capacity to highest value uses, like Uber’s surge pricing.

The same can happen with electricity. A consumer with surplus solar generation could sell that directly to other consumers.

Once capacity increases in EV batteries, electric vehicles will potentially become mobile electricity generators, that could provide some of their stored electricity at peak times. For companies like Unison, this resource could even substitute for the need to upgrade network equipment. Instead of installing a higher capacity cable, we could rely on consumers’ flexibility and their own production capabilities to meet higher demands at particular locations. Automation and rapid advances in communications technologies will enable this to occur as we reach critical mass of these new technologies.

Far from being a drab and boring sector, we’re excited that the Uber and AirBnB concepts have just as much relevance and consumer benefit as in these other sectors. Unison is actively developing its capabilities to enable these activities to occur, albeit being conscious we don’t want to commit too early to any particular technologies or approaches given the rapidly evolving thinking in these areas.