About community power sharing
WE Share community members generate solar energy from their own homes and choose whether to use, store, share, or sell any excess power within the local community.
Solar energy is used directly in homes and businesses, stored in batteries for later use, or kept available for emergencies when the grid experiences outages.
When WE Share members have surplus solar, it can be sold to other participating members at an agreed rate (currently 12c/unit). Likewise, members can purchase locally generated energy when available, supporting both energy resilience and community connection.
Real-Time Monitoring
The WE Share community uses the “My Generation” real-time power-sharing app to track solar generation, sharing status, and local energy use.
The Pathway and Future ambitions
WE Share has created the framework, shared values, and participation structure that guide how Waiheke explores its energy future. The next phase is about scale — increasing participation, strengthening the evidence base, and deepening the community’s ability to shape future benefit pathways.
As more households take part, the island is building the practical and structural base from which a community-shaped, community-owned energy model could one day emerge — keeping the benefits of local renewable generation and resilience within the community. This progression includes:
- broadening household participation
- building shared understandings from real-world experience
- refining the protections and values already in place
- identifying how local benefit can circulate fairly
- supporting the community to shape what a future enterprise could look like
In the wider energy sector, when many homes with solar and batteries work together in a coordinated way, it’s commonly called a virtual power plant (VPP)
WE Share’s focus is on exploring what a community-shaped, values-led version of this kind of coordination could look like over time — with a long-term direction toward community ownership and shared local benefit.
Step by step, the community is building the capability and shared insight needed to make a resilient, locally aligned model possible.
Affordable Solar Solutions for Community Energy
We offer accessible, high-quality solar options to help households join the community power-sharing movement.
We offer accessible, high-quality solar options to help households join the community power-sharing movement.