JB Solar & Electrical · internal working analysis

Mangawhai Golf Club

221 Molesworth Drive, Mangawhai Heads · 12 months of Community Power bills, Aug 2025 – Jun 2026 · site visit Thu 13 Aug, 11am

The headline numbers

138,030
kWh per year
378
kWh per day average
$36,569
actual spend, last 12 months
$43,181
same usage at today's tariff

Read from 11 invoices covering 334 billed days. Every bill's usage cross-checks against the "total units used this bill" line on the invoice.

Consumption by month — the load peaks in summer

359
300
381
421
427
426
453
423
323
340
326
Aug 25SepOctNovDec Jan 26FebMarAprMayJun
Club House Pumps (irrigation) Greenkeepers Figures are kWh/day for the billing period

This is the good kind of load shape

December to March runs 420–452 kWh/day. April to June drops to 322–340. That's a 35% summer lift, and it sits directly on top of the solar generation curve instead of fighting it.

Most jobs have the opposite problem — peak demand in winter, when the array produces least. Here the biggest bills land in the months of highest generation.

Irrigation is what drives the swing

The Pumps ICP moves from about 1,500 kWh/month in winter to 3,900 in summer. The Club House stays flat at 7,300–9,000 kWh/month all year.

87% of pump usage is on the controlled (night) rate — the irrigation is running overnight. That matters a lot given what just happened to the tariff.

Three separate ICPs

ICPSiteSharekWh/yrNotes
0000535612NR7A3Club House70.9%97,911Anytime only — the main target
0000535511NR860Pumps22.5%31,10687% controlled — irrigation
0000557358NR38AGreenkeepers6.5%9,013Anytime only — small

Solar on one ICP only offsets that ICP. Whether this becomes one system, three, or a consolidation is a live design decision — needs the physical layout confirmed on site.

Their tariff just jumped — and it changes the case

What changed in June 2026

Club House energy24.72c26.65 c/kWh
Pumps anytime23.58c26.65 c/kWh
Pumps controlled19.09c26.65 c/kWh
Fixed charge, per ICP177.40c450.74 c/day

Energy is up about 8%. The fixed daily charge is up 154%, and the controlled-rate discount has been removed entirely — night power now costs the same as day power.

Same usage, today's prices

Energy · 138,030 kWh @ 26.65c$36,785
Fixed · 3 ICPs @ 450.74 c/day$4,936
+ GST, less 10% prompt-pay$43,181
Actual, last 12 months$36,569
Change+$6,612 · +18%

Build the proposal on roughly $43,000/yr, not $36,500. Modelling savings off last year's rates would understate the case by about a fifth.

Check this on Thursday before it goes in a proposal. A 154% fixed-charge jump is big enough that it could be a plan change, a network reclassification, or a one-off rather than the new normal. Get Ejaaz to confirm the June bill is what he'll keep paying.

The angle this opens up

Losing the controlled rate means the irrigation pumps no longer get cheap power overnight — they now pay full daytime price to run at night. Shifting irrigation into daylight hours to run directly off the array turns roughly 31,000 kWh/yr of night consumption into self-consumed solar.

That's a scheduling change, not a hardware cost, and it's worth real money the moment the array is in. Confirm on site whether the irrigation timing is actually movable — greens watering is usually done at night for agronomic reasons, not just tariff ones.

Full billing detail

PeriodDaysClub HouseGreenkeepersPumpsTotal kWhkWh/day$ incl GST
Aug 2025247,3077505468,603358.52,304.32
Sep 2025378,8959991,18711,081299.52,975.26
Oct 2025318,3616842,75211,797380.63,042.31
Nov 2025308,5336353,44912,617420.63,201.25
Dec 2025318,6146963,93513,245427.33,340.96
Jan 2026318,9946903,51313,196425.73,351.76
Feb 2026288,1986183,85412,670452.53,181.59
Mar 2026318,3777343,98813,099422.53,295.50
Apr 2026307,2527521,6759,680322.62,550.60
May 2026317,7117662,07410,552340.42,760.05
Jun 2026307,3549241,4909,767325.63,459.81
Total33489,5968,24828,464126,307378.233,463.41

What Thursday needs to answer

Roof and ground

  • Club house roof — usable area, pitch, orientation, age, structural capacity
  • Greenkeepers' shed — condition and span
  • Ground-mount land — on a golf course this may be the easiest large array
  • Shading — trees are the obvious risk here

Electrical

  • Switchboards — capacity and spare ways at each ICP
  • Supply — phase configuration and main fuse rating per ICP
  • Distance between the three ICPs — does consolidating make sense?
  • Northpower DG — commercial export limit, in writing (same team as Dundee Lane)

Load

  • Irrigation schedule — when do the pumps run, and can that move to daytime?
  • Club house daytime baseload — kitchen, chillers, bar, HVAC
  • Anything coming — cart EV chargers, clubhouse extension, more irrigation

Commercial

  • Who signs — Ejaaz, a committee, or the board?
  • Timeframe — and is it tied to a budget cycle?
  • Capital or financed — does this need a funded structure?
  • The June tariff — confirm it's the new normal

Scale check — not a quote

ArrayGenerationvs 138,030 kWh/yr load
30 kW~42,000 kWh/yr30%
50 kW~70,000 kWh/yr51%
100 kW~140,000 kWh/yr101%

Do not put these in front of the client. They are a sanity check on scale only, at a Northland yield of ~1,400 kWh/kWp/yr. Covering 100% of annual consumption does not mean a zero bill — it depends entirely on how much is self-consumed at the moment it's generated. The club house daytime baseload and the irrigation schedule decide the real number, which is why the site visit comes before the design.