Greg Wallace: Master Plumbers CEO reveals whether it's worth ditching gas for electricity

With gas prices going up all over the country, there's debate over whether households should make the switch to electricity. 

Contact Energy recently revealed it's hiking gas prices by an average of 17 percent, as the decline in production has hit faster and harder than expected.

Master Plumbers CEO Greg Wallace says making the switch is a big decision - and could set households back by thousands of dollars.

"The costs are anything between five and a half to $10,000 dollars to change over, so that capital investment is a considerable investment, and that payback takes some time."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now, if you are a regular listener to the show
and your house users gas, you'll have heard me telling
you might want to think about switching to electricity, or
maybe switching your gas provider or whatever. And that's because
we're running out of gas right And two days ago
we got the news that Contact is putting up prices
by about seventeen percent for thousands of people who use gas.
Master Plumber CEO Greg Wallace thinks though, that switching to

(00:20):
electricity might not be the right decision for everyone, and
he's with us now, Hi.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
Greg, Oh, good afternoon, Heather.

Speaker 1 (00:25):
Why not.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Look, it's the capital cost so we're getting I mean,
let me be clear though, we're not against heap hump
hot water technology. We're not against solar, and there's electra.
It's horses for courses and people have to make decisions.
Two tear market though, just need to remember are remind
listeners that LPG in the South Island no shortage of

(00:47):
LPG at all. Yes, there's some price pressure for that,
but no shortage of LPG. And we do have LPG
reticulated in some places in the South Island. What we're
doing is inundated with consumers investigating, particularly about heat pump
hot water. But the costs are anything between five and
a half to ten thousand dollars to change over. So

(01:10):
that capital investment is a considerable investment, and that payback
takes some time. How long so well, we estimate that
would be about five years for most people to get
that payback on that capital investment of heat pump hot water. Now,
heat pump's great, it's a big tank. It has to
go somewhere. Unfortunately, most of our cylinders are in the seventies, eighties,

(01:33):
and nineties were all installed in the middle of the
house with a linen cupboard, and to retrofit that is
pretty expensive. You've got to have space for it, and
you've got to have that the usage because you're actually
heating a lot of water. You're heating up to three
hundred and twenty liters of water, and so if you're
a couple, that may not be your best choice. If

(01:56):
you're a low use of usage of hot water.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
Trouble is right, So you can you can you can
do it now and then you can get your You'll
you'll be breaking even in five years, or you can
wait for five years and then do it and then
you've wasted all your money on gas for the last
five years. Look again, gas is not going to get
cheaper at any point ever in the future, is it.

Speaker 2 (02:20):
No? And but my point is also is electricity going
to remain the same or we're going to have the
same without a gas and a competitive energy sector, whereas
the electricity price is going to go hither. The other
point is biogas is real, and so in Denmark this
year they will produce it close to forty five percent

(02:40):
of biogas, and that is taking the food scraps and
we've got one plant in Central North Island and we've
got another plant opening in christ Church. There's taking food
scraps that don't go to landfall and turning that into biogas,
and that can go straight into the natural gas pipeline.
Now Denmark by twenty thirty, one hundred percent of their

(03:04):
gas will come from biogas. We should be investing in
that technology.

Speaker 1 (03:10):
But that's also sort of unicorn stuff at the moment,
isn't it, Like that's not real if you if you're
sitting there and I appreciate your enthusiasm about it, but
at the moment, if you're thinking about switching saving money
electricity is this is a different thing altogether, Can I
ask you? So I've got in my house in the lounge,
I've got one of those those heat is a gas
heater that's supposed to look like a real fireplace, you know,

(03:32):
the one that's got the little like loggy things, and
it looks it's sort of a courzy and stuff. Should
I be thinking about ripping that out and putting something
electric in there?

Speaker 2 (03:43):
If you've got gas connected? Now that actually that device
is actually very energy efficient to hit your home. Yeah,
and so they're more.

Speaker 1 (03:52):
Energy efficient than some electric system would have been.

Speaker 2 (03:56):
Well, you can put a white box on the on
the wall in that heat pump the ambience, yes, okay,
and that will be more energy efficient. But the gas
flame effect fire that you've got a very energy efficient Okay.

Speaker 1 (04:11):
As you say, you can get the sort of the
sexy romance with the.

Speaker 2 (04:14):
Flame that's important in your health.

Speaker 1 (04:18):
Now, you can't quantify that, like you can't say how
much that's worth. Okay, what about if you want to
disconnect gas? That in and of itself, greg is hugely expensive,
isn't it just turning it off?

Speaker 2 (04:28):
Yeah? Again, And so misinformation South Island LPG and so
no disconnection fees because they use bottles. North Island US,
there's some disconnection fees there. I mean, I just also
want to point out that we're going to the holiday period.
There's a lot of people that have cribs, batchers and
holiday homes, and we've got a big Airbnb rental in
the market now. For those homes that aren't used for

(04:53):
one hundred percent of the time, storing hot water is
again not a sensible option, and so having Guess or
an infinity or integrity system is actually a good choice
for those people.

Speaker 1 (05:05):
Yeah. Actually, that's a fair point that you make, although Greg,
don't forget in a natural disaster, I'm going to be
drinking water out of my hot water cylinder and what
are you going to be drinking.

Speaker 2 (05:14):
I'm going to have my stormwater that I've stored on
the side of my house and I can just open
the tech.

Speaker 1 (05:19):
Yeah, you're already prepared for it. I like that, Greg,
Thanks very much, mate, look after yourself. Greg Wallace, Master
Plumber's CEO. For more from Hither Duplessy Allen Drive, listen
live to news talks it'd be from four pm weekdays,
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