Infratec business development manager David Francis said up to now most of the projects the firm had been involved in were overseas, such as this completed 96kw solar panel plant in Rarotonga.

A South Canterbury-owned energy company says rising power costs have prompted it turn its focus on the New Zealand market.

Within the last month Infratec, a renewable energy company owned by community owned utility firm Alpine Energy, took on a new business development manager, David Francis, tasked with bringing its products to New Zealand.

Francis said the company's technology, built around providing photovoltaic (solar) panels and plants, battery storage and small-scale power grids, had particular uses in rural areas such as South Canterbury.

He said up to now, aside from a few small scale project most of the work it had done had been overseas, in places like the Pacific islands.

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Now they were looking to "bring on New Zealand as a sales area as well," Francis said.

"The time is ripe really to leverage all that experience and expertise that Infratec has got and bring it to New Zealand, there's a number of elements actually and they are all happening simultaneously.

"You've got the price point dropping ... and energy costs rising, that's always a driver, there is no doubt a stronger focus now on the environmental issues that come with using energy as well.

"The technology has been around for a long time, and has been relatively mature for a long time, but the New Zealand has really matured in terms of commercial realities.

"All of those factors are all lining up simultaneously and that's just the right time for us to be looking to bring it to New Zealand."

He said businesses were realising that solar panels were now a good sustainable and environmentally friendly option to help with greenhouse gas emissions,

"They are a good commercial option for a lot of businesses.

"People aren't knocking the door down but we are at a point now where I can knock on the door and make a really strong commercial case."

He said the technology had been around for such a long time it was now "very reliable", and was being used extensively overseas.

Businesses such as hotels and motels, tourism operators, large industrial and commercial users, big box retail, shopping malls and cool stores, "where the supply of power is essential for their operations", were ideally suited to the kind of large scale power solutions it offered, Francis said.

Alpine Energy's expertise also had a "huge role" to play in helping Infratec isolate uses of its technology with particular applications in rural areas such as South canterbury.

"One of the standard applications of this sort of technology is if you have a client or as customer that is at the end of the [power] grid, and the capacity of the grid is just not big enough to supply them.

"You can either extend the grid, which is very expensive, or you can sue this sort of technology along with battery storage to actually reduce their demand, that's actually a very viable solutions these days."