Best Large Business 2021
Winner: Vector Powersmart
Vector Powersmart is responsible for delivering some of the largest and most iconic solar PV and energy storage systems in New Zealand, and 2020 saw the business excel in creativity, innovation, customer satisfaction and national debuts.
Over the past year, Vector Powersmart concurrently launched Aotearoa’s first 1MW floating solar plant and built the largest rooftop solar project, with a supporting Power Purchase Agreement (PPA), all in the midst of overcoming significant 2020 Covid-19 related delivery challenges. As well as these achievements we secured technical consultancy work for more than 20 megawatts of solar farm projects in New Zealand and helped to develop the Waiheke Electrification project.
Smart charging technology is crucial to electrifying transport in New Zealand and Vector Powersmart continue to lead the way in realising a network with smart charging by project managing the deployment for Vector, for an additional 80 chargers on Waiheke Island, a total of 190+ chargers across the network. The chargers have been monitored and analysed since early 2020 and contribute to the networks understanding of charging behaviour, demand management algorithms, network integration and the broader customer experience. Part of the initiative was to install 10 7.4kW public chargers across the island to help inform Vector’s understanding of how public charging behaviour is developing. Vector partnered with EECA to deploy the chargers, and there continues to be a close collaboration with the community group Electric Island Waiheke. They have the goal of making Waiheke Island 100% electric by 2030.
In addition to the work being done in New Zealand, our project management and technical design team also continued to manage two live large-scale solar and BESS construction contracts in the Pacific Islands, which included one of our engineers travelling with the NZ Navy to oversee a procurement drop off in Tokelau.
To date, our completed projects exceed 15MW of solar PV and 80MWh of BESS.
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