About Simon & Kristina Cope @ 19 Manapau Street, Meadowbank, Auckland, New Zealand
Background on Simon and Kristina Cope
What on earth got us into renewable energy, let alone making our house as energy efficient as possible?
Well, you guessed it, we would like to thank our parents for the positive influence they have given us as we grew up, and continue to give now. - Kristina's father, John Austin, founding partner of JASMAX, New Zealand's largest architectural practise encouraged Kristina to qualify as a registered architect. Her mother, Kay Austin, a successful importer and distributor of cotton (for knitting machines), in addition to marketing a range of her own apparel under the 'Kay Austin' label throughout NZ.
- Simon's father, Sam W. Cope, builder and then Sales Marketing Professional for many years at Frank Winstones, encouraged Simon at an early age to play around with electricity/electronics and solar heating. Sam then encouraged Simon to become an electrician with the Ministry of Works based at Fanshawe Street, Downtown Auckland. Here Simon got the opportunity to work with M&I installing photovoltaics (solar electric modules) on the Lighthouses around New Zealand, to helping the Harbour Board with installing PVs on the signal bouys in the Auckland harbour, through to putting them on all the emergency telephones up and down the Auckland motorways.
- Simon's mother, Robin Cope, multi-lingual in English and French, (qualified English teacher), encouraged him in marketing, sales and entrepeneurial skills.
So, our parents starting us on the journey, and when we met each other, Kristina was a practising architect running her company 'Earth Building South Pacific' specialising in Earth Architecture (Adobe mudbrick, Rammed Earth etc), and Simon was now running his company, C+I Solar Ltd, specialising in commerical and residential photovoltaic system design and installation. Putting our foot where our mouth was, encouraged by well known Auckland publisher and editor; Jon Eisen, we did two things. 1/ In 1993 John challenged Simon to 100% run his house off solar electricity. So off the grid we went for 5 years. To read about this story, click here. 2/ Wrote a comprehensive book called 'Solar Made Easy' which sold out of print twice (over 4000 copies sold in New Zealand alone) - so obviously a demand here in New Zealand from Kiwis to learn about using solar in their house to effectively save on their power bills.
When Simon Cope left the Ministry of Works he now had an NZCE in Electronics and Computer Science, and was partway through doing his Certificate in Supervisory Management. After realising he had good management and sales skills he applied for a job at Components + Instrumentation (NZ) Ltd - the company who was the sole importer of photovoltaics into New Zealand (the same company that as an electrician the MOW, Auckland Harbour Board and M&I was purchasing for Simon and his team to install.... small world)
C+I NZ Ltd also had many other commercial clients - Telecom, NZ Police, Dept of Conservation, NIWA etc that purchased PVs for their industrial and commerical projects throughout NZ...
Seeing the potential for more domestic use of this incredible technology Simon (now as a shareholder in C+I) proposed to the other Directors that he create a separate entity called C+I Solar Ltd....
Simon then proceeded to set up 21 Renewable Energy Consultants (and resellers for the PV related products he was importing) throughout the country and started a marketing campaign to raise awareness of the urban use of solar electricity and energy conservation with the general public.
From there, Simon Cope became a regular speaker at various National Fielddays in the different towns throughout NZ, a regular commentator on TV and in the NZ Herald on solar energy in NZ...
Hopefully, this short history about us was not too boring! (if you want to know more then go here to learn more about Simon Cope's achievements - it is business orientated (I warn you now)...)
Otherwise..
Please send us an email, join our mailing list and we will attempt to keep you up-to-date on the different products and services we use (and will use) to finish the house off with.
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