Aotea Energy aims to revolutionize the market with its peer-to-peer sharing network

Tama Toki won the Māori Entrepreneurial Leader Award and the Kaitiaki Business Leader Award in 2022.
Photo: RNZ / Amy Williams

Imagine selling energy you don’t need to your neighbor, or buying it when you don’t need it.

The peer-to-peer sharing network is what Aotea Energy is turning into a reality.

The company recently received $50,000 to develop its sustainable energy technology through Creative HQ’s Climate Accelerator program.

Its founder, Tama Toki, who recently won the Māori Entrepreneurial Leader Award and the Kaitiaki Business Leader Award at the Māori Business Awards, is initially focusing his efforts on Great Barrier Island/Aotea, his hometown, where energy security can be uncertain.

He said Mapuna that he draws inspiration from his upbringing.

“Aotea doesn’t have any power, so everyone there is super self-sufficient. A lot of people have solar panels, some kind of car battery.

“Our main business is based there and we needed to put a big power bank there… and the idea of ​​having intermittent generation if we weren’t using the asset was to share with the papakāinga, the community we were working with in the neighbourhood, and that was the seed planted.”

Toki said his team is building its own peer-to-peer data-sharing network and testing it in 10 homes on the island.

“It’s really, really exciting. The only way to try it is to build the entire technology stack.”

The idea is to make everything work smarter, so the technology could predict weather patterns and the typical energy needs of each home.

Toki believed that New Zealand had sufficient resources to make new discoveries in renewable energy.

“I think Aotearoa should become the first renewable energy economy in the world.

“We’re already at 82 per cent renewables for our grid, a demographic of 5 million people, the same size as Sydney, and I think we have enough wind and solar resources to be a trailblazer in that area.”