Welcome Bay resident Paul Hignett has unveiled one of the Bay of Plenty's first solar arrays.
He believes New Zealanders should be harnessing the sun's power to supply energy back to the national electricity grid.
"Having your own solar power station could be a reality now," says Paul, an expert in sustainable energy and owner of PH Electric.

Tauranga MP Simon Bridges at the launch of Paul's solar array.

"With solar panels being reduced in price from $14 per watt to $5 per watt, these systems are economic in regard to payback."
Paul's 1.8kw array of solar panels cost about $18,000 and is suitable for a small home.
A 3.6kw array is also available and suitable for a large home, costing $28,000.
"The return is 12 per cent per annum."
Described as a 'grid-tie' system, the array supplies power directly back to the national grid with no use of batteries in the home. Meridian Energy pays the retail cost of power, called the 'feed-in-tariff', for any power supplied via the system.
"Currently some European countries and some Australian states pay three times the retail rate for your DG (distributed generation) power. I believe New Zealand will follow their lead," says Paul.
While the industry is only in its infancy in this country, Paul says New Zealanders are uniquely situated to take advantage of the high number of sunlight hours here, especially in the Bay of Plenty.
"There are also great opportunities for our electronics industry to build its own grid-tie inverters. There is a worldwide shortage.
"What we as an industry are aiming at is to install about 40,000 distributed generation systems throughout New Zealand. This will result in about a thousand new electrical industry jobs and provide the security of power supply that is important for future growth in New Zealand.
"It will also mean no flooding of arable land for hydro dams, and mothballing the Huntly coal fired station. This will also result in less ETS (Emissions Trading Scheme) levies for New Zealand, currently a billion dollars."