We caught up with Kayla to see how they’re getting on with their solar a little over a year later!
How did you first come across the competition, and what made you decide to apply?
I was just scrolling through FB and saw your pop-up ad, and during that time we were reading The Magic book by Rhonda Byrne with the kids for home-schooling, which is all about changing your mindset and deep manifestation. Everything around us was flowing and so aligned at that time, so we thought, why not give it a try?
It was pretty funny, it was 10 minutes before the competition closed and my application wasn’t submitting. I said to my hubby it’s not going through, but my brother turned around and said, “Sis, if it’s meant to be it’ll go through, and if it’s not meant to be it won’t go through.” And boom, I pushed send one more time and our application went through, and we all looked at each other like, “whatttt?!” with big smiles on our faces, cracking up laughing. I think in that moment I kinda knew we had won! 🥰
What was going through your mind when you found out you’d won the solar system?
We done it!!!! Manifesting is powerful! Mindset change is powerful, and we done that!! But now let’s get our butts moving and finish some of the inside where our walls weren’t even lined before we go on camera hahaha. So it was a whole couple of weeks getting most of what we could finished, and it was just a relief knowing that we will have power and not have to hear the generator running anymore lol.
Can you describe the solar package you received from GridFree in your own words?
Absolutely, freedom!!! It’s been more than enough for us, and we are a whānau of six. It was that missing piece to our journey and that little bit closer to being fully self-sufficient in all areas of our lives!
How long has the system been installed now, and how has it performed?
It’s been just over a year now since we had our solar installed, and it’s been amazing!!!
We have brought us a bigger fridge and now have a freezer for all our home kills and extra veggies we grow ourselves. We can now freeze any overflow, and if I can wash 2–3 loads of washing a day, I’m happy haha.
But it’s just been amazing, no words can describe how good this system is!
What has surprised you most about living with solar?
That even though we have solar now, we still don’t use as much power as I thought we would lol. We honestly thought our kids would go hard and turn everything on! We got the kids lamps for their rooms, and even then they still don’t turn them on haha. As for the toaster that they couldn’t wait to have, they have only used that a couple of times, and for some reason they have gone back to cooking it in a pan lol.
But for us, it’s how much this system can actually run ☺️ To be able to run our washing machine 2–3 times a day when the sun’s out, our fridge freezer and chest freezer, our water pump and infinity for our showers every day, it’s more than what we asked.
I’m sure we could even upgrade to bigger ones and it’ll still run everything, but for now we are so grateful to even have those big things running.
How has solar changed your day-to-day life at home?
It’s made everything just so much easier, and our morning routines are a bit quicker! When it does rain, we still have power to watch movies as a whānau, and the biggest would be running my hubby’s sleep machine. It has just made our life so much easier. 🙏🏽
Has it changed the way you think about or use power?
Yes! Especially when we know we are going to have a week or two of rain. We just have to be mindful of how many days we have to budget our power out over, and as long as our freezer is going and there’s enough power to have showers, we are good.
Are there any moments over the past year where solar really proved its value?
If I had to pick a moment, it’ll be when we do our home kills and it’s running our freezer. It’s just a whole level of gratitude knowing we can stock up on meat and our babies have a full freezer.
It’s the days we are so busy and don’t have time to preserve our overflow of fruit and veggies, where we can just bag them all up and chuck them in the freezer to preserve later on.
It’s days where we have heaps of washing and we can do 2–4 loads a day, it’s like, yes, we don’t have to travel into town to do our washing anymore or fill our Gene up weekly!
It’s the rainy days where our babies just want to have movie days. There’s just so many moments we took for granted while living on-grid that we’ll be forever grateful for now we have solar. And a massive one is when the power does go out in our town, our babies still have power as normal, hubby can still run his machine, and our lives aren’t affected by it.
Has having solar reduced stress or pressure around power or household costs?
Of course! Financially it’s been amazing! Not having to buy petrol to fill our Gene every week has been massive!! We are saving over $200 a week just on petrol. That’s an expensive shower and washing loads we don’t have to worry about anymore lol.
It was the last piece to our puzzle, not having to depend on the outside world for anything.
What does off-grid living mean to you now, compared to before you had solar?
It’s the freedom. Our whole plan about going off-grid was when we were sitting at a table after mahi one day with my parents, and we were like, why are we working so much? Sometimes 6–7 days a week, and it was our babies that were missing out and getting raised by someone else. When we wrote down on paper what we actually paid out of our wages, our biggest costs were rent, power and food. That’s when we thought, what would life look like if we didn’t have those bills?
And here we are, knowing that we don’t have to wake up and go to a 9–5 job because we don’t have the overheads we used to have. We both get to stay home and raise our babies together, knowing that we don’t have to miss out on them growing up anymore. So having a solar system has been a massive game changer.
Has the system improved your home-schooling experience? If so, how?
It has in a way, in the likes of the kids doing some of their school work online or being able to search things up without their laptops dying. But even still, we limit their time on devices and most of their classes are still outdoors ☺️
Have you faced any challenges or learning curves with the system?
At the start it was just getting used to learning how to convert the power over and making sure we don’t drop the batteries too low so they last us forever. After learning how to read our batteries, we know how much we can run.
Our challenges would’ve been in wintertime, which was the biggest test. We had a whole two weeks of rain, so learning how much we could run during that time was a good experience lol. At that time, we were still learning how to read our batteries, so there was a period of two days over the whole winter where we did run our Gene just in case, because we didn’t want to run our batteries too low. But knowing what we know now and how to read our batteries properly, we probably didn’t need our Gene, and our system held up pretty good!
How have you found dealing with GridFree throughout the process and beyond installation?
Awww, we love you guys!!!! Amazing people, amazing business, and just so helpful. Knowing that if anything goes wrong we can call yous, not that we’ve had to do that before, but we know how helpful you guys are and feel so lucky to have met some of you 🥰 You honestly have the best and such a humble team we’ve ever met through any business.
Do you feel more secure or resilient knowing you have your own power supply?
Every day!!! It’s given us peace of mind that we have our own secure power supply and we aren’t reliant on the grid to provide us with power, especially when we have so many weather events and power outages up here. It’s just having that extra security knowing we are ok and our babies are ok if any of those happen.
Have friends, whānau, or neighbours shown interest in your setup?
Aw, we’ve had so many whānau and people in our community reach out to us to see how good they are, and honestly we can’t fault anything!!!! We even had someone we didn’t know turn up here who had heard from someone else that we got solar installed and they wanted to have a look and ask how good it was, so that was pretty cool. We always forward them on to you guys!!!
We even had an opportunity to redesign our marae from scratch and put forward the idea of our marae having solar instead of connecting to the grid, because why not. So it will be interesting to see the outcome of that as well.
Would you consider yourself an advocate for solar now? Why?
Absolutely 100%!!! Solar is life 🙌🏽 I think where the world is heading, and with the prices of everything going up and power prices going through the roof, that on its own would save so many whānau thousands per year if only they had solar. It also gives you your power back, knowing you are the only one in control of your power and no one else.
What advice would you give to others in a similar position to where you were a year ago?
If anything, get solar before a Gene lol. Had we known this at the start of our journey, the amount of petrol we did go through to run a Gene every day would’ve added up to more than enough to have paid for a whole system. It’ll save you so much time, you’ll never look back! Even if you can’t afford the big systems, get a smaller system to start with. It’ll be so worth it!!
Is there anything you wish you’d known before installing solar?
How easy life would’ve been for those couple of years prior to not having solar lol.
How has solar aligned with your family’s values around independence or sustainability?
Generating our own power means we are less dependent on traditional power providers, saving us from rising energy costs, and we have a power source that keeps essential appliances running during grid outages or extreme weather events.
It’s provided a profound sense of pride, ownership and security for our whānau.
What future off-grid plans or projects do you have?
We have so much planned this year. We are hoping to get our other side up, which will be our kitchen and lounge area, so we can have our deck back as a deck lol. As well as getting our two older babies’ tiny homes up so we have more space. So far, they have planted fruit trees around where their tiny homes are going to go, so once they are settled in, their fruit trees around their homes should be pumping by then.
And get a hugeeeee māra (garden) all sorted, and so many more fruit trees to go in.
Anything else you want to share?
We just want to say a huge thank you to the GridFree team! One year in and still so much gratitude flowing around us for what your beautiful team has done for our whānau, and many more years of gratitude to keep flowing in. We appreciate you all! Keep being amazing and changing people’s lives, because words still can’t describe how blessed and grateful we are for you all. ❤️
