How Solar Buddies works

Get more for your extra
solar power with
Solar Buddies^™

What is Solar Buddies™

Solar Buddies™ is a scheme for Trustpower customers who have Solar Panels. If you've got solar panels, you may sometimes produce more power than you can use. If you don't have storage capacity, your only current option is to sell this surplus power back to your energy retailer at market buyback rates (currently 7c per unit* for Trustpower customers). With Solar Buddies™, instead of selling your extra power to your energy retailer, you can sell it to people you nominate as "buddies" at a rate you agree with them.

*1 unit = 1 kilowatt, hour (kWh)

Download sign up form now

It's a win-win

As long as you have extra power, your buddies can buy a portion of their power every month at a price that is less than they would pay Trustpower. And you can sell your extra power for more than the 7c per unit you currently receive selling back to Trustpower.

Your buddies can be on different rates and you can even set a rate of 0c per unit if you’d like to give some of your spare power to someone you know. For example:

You could sell to Buddy 1 at

10c

per unit

And Buddy 2 at

15c

per unit

And Buddies 3, 4 and 5 could get it

FREE

The only restriction is that you can sell a maximum of 50 units to each buddy each month.

What happens if I don’t have enough power for all my buddies every month?

You can allocate your power to your buddies in case you do not have enough extra power for all of them every month.

A podium illustrating how you can prioritise your buddies

You can set an order of priority so that one buddy always gets their power first.

Pie chart showing how you can allocate your energy to your buddies

Each buddy can always get a set percentage of your excess power. For example... Buddy 1 always gets 50%, Buddies 2 and 3 always get 25% each (up to the 50 units per month maximum).

Signing up is easy

Simply download the application form, complete with your details and those of your buddies email it back to solar.buddies@trustpower.co.nz and you’ll be ready to go.

Download sign up form

Who can register for Solar Buddies?

Any residential or small business Trustpower customer can apply to register for Solar Buddies. If you are not already with Trustpower just call us on 0800 78 95 02 or click here to switch.

Your buddies also need to be Trustpower customers. If they are not already with us, just get their consent so we can contact them, indicate on the registration form that they are not currently with Trustpower and we’ll contact them to sign them up.

Other things you need to know

Most Solar Buddy sellers have up to five buddies. But if you have more, just complete an additional sign up form and make it clear that you are the seller for both sets of buddies. You might want to check how much spare power you are currently exporting each month as this will indicate how many buddies you are likely to be able to supply with up to the 50 unit per month maximum per buddy.
There are no restrictions on where your buddies are located, so they don’t have to be based in the same region as you.
Your buddies can be on low or standard user rates.
In some cases, depending on the Trustpower meter read and billing cycle, your credits may appear on every second monthly invoice. This will not affect your total credits.

CLICK HERE FOR FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

If you have any questions, and the above link doesn't answer these, you can contact us on 0800 78 95 02 and ask for Solar Buddies™ or email us at solar.buddies@trustpower.co.nz. You can also click here for further information that you can download, including an explanation of how the billing works.

For the Solar Buddies terms and conditions for sellers click here.

For the Solar Buddies terms and conditions for buddies click here.