Guide to ANZ’s 1% Good Energy Home Loan

If you've got an existing ANZ home loan, you can borrow up to $80,000 at a fixed 1% per annum interest rate for three years to put solar panels, a battery, or other approved energy-efficient upgrades on your home. That's the ANZ Good Energy Home Loan top-up, and on a typical $13,000 solar and battery spend, borrowing at 1% instead of a standard home loan rate (around 5.5% to 6.5% fixed in 2025, per the published rates of the main banks) saves you well over $1,500 in interest across the three years. For a lot of households, it's the single thing that tips solar from "maybe one day" to "let's do it now."

Here's the honest version of how it works, who actually qualifies, where the limits bite, and the small print that the marketing brochure glosses over. No fluff.

What the Good Energy Home Loan actually is

It is not a separate loan you apply for from scratch. It's a top-up on an existing ANZ home loan, lent at a discounted fixed rate for a fixed term. ANZ launched it back in 2018 and it has quietly become one of the better-value pieces of green finance going in Aotearoa.

The headline terms, per ANZ's own published product information:

• 1.00% p.a. fixed interest rate for a three-year term.
• Borrow from $1,000 up to $80,000.
• No establishment fee on the Good Energy portion.
• You can make extra repayments or repay it early without break costs, which is unusual for a fixed-rate loan and genuinely useful.

The catch that sits underneath all of this: you need to already be an ANZ home loan customer, or be willing to bring your mortgage across to ANZ. It is a perk for the bank's existing borrowers, not a standalone solar loan anyone off the street can grab.

What you can spend it on

ANZ keeps a list of approved products and upgrades. For solar specifically, it covers the lot:

• Solar panels (the array itself and the inverter).
• Home batteries for storing your own generation.
• EV chargers installed at the home.

It also stretches well beyond solar, which is worth knowing if you're improving the whole house at once:

• Insulation (ceiling, underfloor, wall).
• Heat pumps and efficient heating.
• Double glazing and efficient hot water systems.
• Rainwater tanks and a handful of other approved upgrades.

That breadth matters. If you're putting panels on and your 1960s weatherboard place still has a draughty single-glazed lounge and patchy ceiling insulation, you can fund the panels and the insulation under the same 1% facility, up to the $80k ceiling. Doing both at once usually delivers a far better real-world result than solar alone, because a warm, well-sealed house wastes less of the power you're generating.

The step-by-step to qualifying

Step 1: Confirm you've got (or can get) an ANZ home loan

This is the gate. You need an existing ANZ mortgage with enough equity in your property to support a top-up. If your mortgage is with another bank, you'd need to refinance across to ANZ first, and that's a bigger decision with its own break fees and legal costs to weigh up. Don't refinance a whole mortgage purely to chase a discounted rate on $13k of solar; the maths rarely works once you account for break costs.

Step 2: Check you have the equity (lending headroom)

A top-up is still borrowing against your house, so ANZ assesses it like any home loan increase. They'll look at your equity (how much of the house you actually own) and your ability to service the larger loan. In practice, if you've owned for a few years and have a comfortable buffer below the bank's loan-to-value limits, this is straightforward. If you're recently in and stretched thin, it may not fly.

Step 3: Get a quote for an approved upgrade

You'll need a quote or invoice from your installer showing the work qualifies. This is where it pays to have your solar quote sorted first. If you're still at the stage of working out what a fair price even looks like, get a few quotes to compare before you talk finance; we'll line up three from installers we've checked over ourselves here: https://nzsolaris.co.nz/get-solar-quotes/.

Step 4: Apply for the top-up

You apply through ANZ (online, phone, or in a branch) for a home loan top-up and nominate the Good Energy rate for that portion. You specify the amount and the upgrade. ANZ may ask for proof the money went on the approved work, so keep your invoices.

Step 5: Structure the repayments before you sign

This is the step people rush, and it's the one that costs them. More on how to set it up below.

How the top-up limits and repayments actually work

The $80,000 maximum is generous. Almost no residential solar and battery job gets near it. A solid 6.6kW system with a mid-sized battery typically lands somewhere around $18,000 to $26,000 fully installed in 2025, based on installer pricing across the country (we keep a running breakdown of what a watt actually costs here: https://nzsolaris.co.nz/cost-per-watt-nz/). So the ceiling is rarely the binding constraint. Your equity and serviceability are the real limits.

The three-year term is the bit to plan around

Here's the detail that genuinely trips people up, and you won't find it spelled out plainly in most write-ups.

The 1% rate is fixed for three years. At the end of that term, the Good Energy portion rolls onto ANZ's standard home loan rates. It does not stay at 1% forever. So the smart play is to treat those three years as your window to knock as much of the balance down as you possibly can, while it's costing you almost nothing in interest.

Because you can make extra repayments and repay early with no break fee, the ideal structure is to set your repayments high enough to clear (or very nearly clear) the whole top-up inside the three years. If you borrow $15,000 and aim to repay it across 36 months, that's roughly $425 a month, and the total interest at 1% comes to only around $235 over the full three years. Compare that to the same $15,000 spread over 30 years tacked onto your mortgage at, say, 6%: you'd pay thousands in interest and the panels would be costing you money long after the warranty ran out.

The trap: don't bury it in your 30-year mortgage

This is the single biggest mistake we see. People take the 1% top-up, then let the repayments default to the same long term as their main mortgage. After three years it quietly rolls onto the standard rate, the balance is barely touched, and you end up paying ordinary mortgage interest on solar panels for decades. The discount evaporates.

Set the top-up up as its own loan portion with a short term and aggressive repayments. Aim to be debt-free on it by the time the 1% expires. That's where the real value lives, and it's exactly the kind of thing the brochure won't underline for you.

A worked example: a Christchurch family on the Orion network

Picture a family in a brick-and-tile place in Halswell, Christchurch, on the Orion network. They've owned for six years, have solid equity, and their power bill spikes hard over the Canterbury winter with the heat pump running. They go for a 7kW array plus a 10kWh battery at a fully installed price of $24,000.

• They top up their ANZ mortgage by $24,000 at the 1% Good Energy rate.
• They set repayments to clear it in three years: about $680 a month.
• Total interest across the three years: roughly $375.

Now compare. If they'd borrowed the same $24,000 at a standard 6% fixed rate over the same three years, the interest would be more like $2,290. The Good Energy rate saves them close to $1,900 on this job alone. That saving is effectively a discount on the whole system, and it shifts the payback timeline meaningfully. We get into how that payback maths really stacks up, panels versus battery, here: https://nzsolaris.co.nz/are-solar-panels-worth-it-nz/.

Where this beats a subscription or upfront cash

For a few years SolarZero ran a no-upfront subscription model that appealed to households who didn't want to borrow. That model has since fallen over (we covered what happened and what the alternatives are here: https://nzsolaris.co.nz/solarzero-subscription-alternative/). The Good Energy loan is, for many ANZ customers, a cleaner deal: you own the system outright from day one, the asset adds to your home, and you're not locked into a long contract with escalating monthly payments.

Versus paying cash, the comparison is closer. If you've got $24,000 sitting in the bank earning, say, 4.5% in a term deposit (taxed), borrowing at 1% and leaving your cash invested can actually leave you slightly ahead. Run your own numbers, but don't assume cash is automatically the smarter move when money is this low-cost to borrow.

The honest downsides

It's a genuinely good product, but it isn't for everyone.

• You must bank (or be willing to bank) with ANZ. If your mortgage is elsewhere and happy where it is, the refinance friction usually isn't worth it for a solar-sized top-up.
• It's secured against your home. This is still mortgage debt. If you can't service it, the stakes are higher than an unsecured personal loan.
• The 1% rate ends after three years. The value depends entirely on you repaying fast. Treat it like a personal loan, not a 30-year mortgage add-on.
• Renters and short-term owners. If you don't own, this isn't available to you. And if you're planning to sell within a couple of years, solar rarely pays back fast enough to make the borrowing worthwhile, regardless of the rate.

It's also worth saying plainly: a 1% loan makes solar more affordable to finance, but it doesn't change whether solar suits your roof and your household. A heavily shaded roof or a home that's empty all day still won't generate strong returns just because the money was low-cost. Sort the suitability question first, then use the loan to fund a system that actually pencils out.

Other green lending to compare it against

ANZ isn't the only bank doing this. Several offer green top-ups for existing customers, with terms and rates that move around, so always check the current published rate before you commit. If you want to see at a glance whether you'd qualify for green finance and what's on offer, we built a quick tool for exactly that: https://nzsolaris.co.nz/green-finance-qualifier/.

And if you want the full picture on what going solar actually costs once finance, install, and running numbers are all in the mix, the complete breakdown lives here: https://nzsolaris.co.nz/the-true-cost-of-going-solar-in-nz-bills-finance-and-roi/.

What to check before you sign

• Confirm the current rate and term. Product terms change. Verify it's still 1% for three years at the point you apply.
• Set up the top-up as its own portion with a repayment plan that clears it inside the fixed term.
• Check there's no break fee on early repayment for the Good Energy portion (there shouldn't be, but confirm in writing).
• Keep your installer invoices as proof the funds went on approved work.
• Get the solar quote sorted first so you know exactly how much to borrow and you're not over-committing.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I get the Good Energy Home Loan if I don't bank with ANZ?

Not directly. It's a top-up on an existing ANZ home loan, so you'd need to either already have your mortgage with ANZ or refinance across. Refinancing a whole mortgage just to access a discounted rate on a solar-sized top-up rarely makes financial sense once you account for break fees and legal costs, so weigh it carefully.

How much can I borrow?

Per ANZ's published terms, you can borrow from $1,000 up to $80,000 under the Good Energy rate. In practice, your actual limit is governed by your equity and your ability to service the larger loan, not the $80k ceiling, since most residential solar and battery jobs sit well below it.

Does the 1% rate last for the whole loan?

No. The 1% rate is fixed for three years. After that, the Good Energy portion rolls onto ANZ's standard home loan rates. The smart move is to repay as much as possible inside the three-year window while interest costs are minimal.

Can I repay it early without penalty?

Yes, that's one of its best features. You can make extra repayments or clear the Good Energy portion early without break costs, which is unusual for a fixed-rate loan. This is exactly why you should aim to knock it down fast before the rate resets.

What can I spend it on besides solar panels?

Plenty. The approved list includes batteries, EV chargers, insulation, heat pumps, double glazing, efficient hot water systems, and rainwater tanks, among others. If you're improving the whole house, you can fund the panels and the insulation together under the same 1% facility, up to the limit.

Is borrowing at 1% better than paying cash?

Often, yes. With money this low-cost to borrow, leaving your savings in a term deposit (even after tax) can leave you marginally ahead versus draining cash for the system. Run your own numbers based on what your savings actually earn, but don't assume cash is automatically smarter.

Will solar wipe out my power bill if I finance it this way?

No. Even a well-sized system with a battery won't zero a grid-connected home's bill, especially through a New Zealand winter when generation drops. Solar trims your bill substantially and the low-cost finance improves the payback, but you'll still have a power account. Anyone promising a zero bill is overselling.

What's the single biggest mistake people make with this loan?

Letting the top-up default to their main mortgage's long term and repayment schedule. The balance barely moves over three years, then it rolls onto the standard rate and you end up paying ordinary mortgage interest on solar panels for decades. Set it up as its own portion with a short term and aggressive repayments.

The Bottom Line

For an ANZ home loan customer, the Good Energy top-up is one of the most cost-effective ways to fund solar in Aotearoa right now. The 1% rate genuinely shifts the maths, often saving well over $1,500 in interest on a typical job, but only if you treat those three years as a window to repay fast rather than burying it in a 30-year mortgage.

Sort your system and your installer first, then bring the finance in to fund a setup that already stacks up on its own merits. If you're still working out whether the numbers work for your roof, start with whether solar's worth it for your situation over here: https://nzsolaris.co.nz/are-solar-panels-worth-it-nz/, and check what a fair price per watt looks like before you commit to anything.