She said the council partially funded the assessments as they saw them as a win-win.
“We see this project as a win-win in terms of climate change and reducing emissions from homes, all of those dollar savings directly translate into emissions savings,” she said.
The programme also helps both renters and homeowners struggling with the cost of living crisis.
“Renters sometimes don’t have much power over [this] stuff, so this is helping people... the next month they’ll see a difference in their power bill.”
Ecobulb energy assessment coordinator Ramona Salvador said two trained assessors in Whanganui had been working in the city for the past three weeks, with four more newly trained assessors starting work soon.
She said they train local people so the assessments have a more human touch and people would be more willing to accept their advice.
“We will never take someone from Auckland to go and do Christchurch, it’s better if we’ve got... locals doing that work because they know everybody, they know the layout of the town,” she said.
In line with this, Arrowsmith said people from different communities, especially in groups, needed the advice the most.
“We’ve kind of picked people who are in touch with those communities.
“We’ve got someone who lives in pensioner housing... we’ve got someone from one of our hapū... and we’ve got someone who works with men’s health issues,” she said.
Assessments are booked in advance, Salvador said they go through the house to see how many lightbulbs are installed before asking questions about the homeowner’s energy consumption like if anyone is at home during the day, how often they shower and what heating they use.
After the assessment is completed, the homeowners get an estimate of how much money they could save per year through things like switching power companies and changing their lightbulbs to Ecobulb’s low-energy alternatives.
On average, Salvador said people in Whanganui who have gone through an assessment could save between a further $600 to $700 per year after the installation of Ecobulb’s lights.
At the end of the assessment, assessors will also offer to replace the home’s bulbs and provide other equipment like low-flow shower heads for free.
Salvador said a common issue she had seen was people only changing bulbs when they broke rather than doing it to save energy.
“We’ve heard people don’t want their lights put in because they’re waiting for the other ones to go,” she said.
This was particularly an issue with older people, she said, which is why they look to train assessors with connections to the people who need help.
“They’ll be able to say, but auntie you should really change all of your lightbulbs because this will help you on your power bill.”
She said Ecobulb’s LED bulbs use 10 per cent of the power of incandescent bulbs and are made of durable plastics.
Some other simple things Salvador said people can do to reduce energy consumption, was to turn lights and appliances off when not in use, close their curtains before the sun goes down in the winter to keep heat and shorten the time people spend in the shower.
“We’re waiting for a supply of... shower timers and we’ll give those to each home as well, especially those ones that have children because we’ve found that kids love a challenge so if you’ve got a timer there they’ll try to beat that timer,” Salvador said.
Arrowsmith hoped to get more funding in the future to carry out more assessments past this initial pilot.
After the project is completed, the Government will assess its result, with the potential of expanding it in the future.
