Time to give electricity the flick?

Forums › Home Workshop DIY › Time to give electricity the flick?

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meow
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#2046402 30-Jun-2018 12:37

@SBQ Careful what you post - that link gave full access to your Genesis power shout portal so I have removed it.

I have been using Volt to ride out the expensive weeks. It doesn't matter, we're just using power as we need it. I'm still better off compared to switching to a fixed rate provider.

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SBQ

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#2046404 30-Jun-2018 12:48

michaelmurfy:

@SBQ Careful what you post - that link gave full access to your Genesis power shout portal so I have removed it.

I have been using Volt to ride out the expensive weeks. It doesn't matter, we're just using power as we need it. I'm still better off compared to switching to a fixed rate provider.

Thank you for checking and removing the link. Glad you've found a scheme that works. I do believe being in Christchurch we're disadvantaged by Orion's winter pricing surcharge compared to other regions. I think it's something important to say as when you're on a fixed price provider, that kind of information isn't mentioned.

pogo

84 posts

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#2046409 30-Jun-2018 12:57

voy1d:

pogo:

Can anyone make any sense of the outages described on this page? https://pocp.redspider.co.nz/search/calendar?period_start=2018-06-30

What exactly do you want to know?

As for the high prices, a big driver of this is the cold settled weather over the country and the lack of wind generation due to no wind. This is a risk that we have and illustrates perfectly why wind generation is not the solution to shutting down gas, because when you get sequences like this (which usually occur in Winter) the market price reacts in the way that it is. Until wind generation picks up, I think you can expect significant volatility in prices across the country.

I just wanted to know if any outages explained the high spot price overnight and this morning. There was apparently plenty of spare capacity (there always is overnight and weekend mornings) so what caused the high prices? I understand that it's cold and there's no wind, but as we've seen over the last few days that, with a few peaker outages, this has only really affected the spot prices in peak times.

tdgeek

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#2046415 30-Jun-2018 13:12

Why do prices increase when its cold?

While it may seem a silly question, why do they?

We haven't run out of generated power, so why charge more? We dont seem to be charging more to reduce consumption and avoid running out.

I can see if they used more expensive generation such as fossil fuels, but does that cause all prices like Flick to spike 300 to 600%?

If we have to fire up more turbines, yes a cost, but again, why such a massive increase?

rugrat

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#2046466 30-Jun-2018 16:13

I’m happy with just over 9 cents a unit at night.

About half of power usuage occurs at night, hot water.

I don’t care about free hour of power if powers going to be 29 cents higher a unit other times.

I’ll wear paying a bit more in summer as that’s low usuage period anyway.

That 4 hours of free power is second time Genesis has offered it, so hopefully it becomes regular.

Scott3

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#2046467 30-Jun-2018 16:19

tdgeek:

Why do prices increase when its cold?

While it may seem a silly question, why do they?

We haven't run out of generated power, so why charge more? We dont seem to be charging more to reduce consumption and avoid running out.

I can see if they used more expensive generation such as fossil fuels, but does that cause all prices like Flick to spike 300 to 600%?

If we have to fire up more turbines, yes a cost, but again, why such a massive increase?

Electric generator's bid in their assets in a "stack", for each 1/2 hour block. For example, you may bid that you are willing to provide 100MW of power @ $150/MWh. You may bid another 100MW of capacity in @$300/MWh.

Every generator gets paid the highest price that somebody gets dispatched at.

if you were the only generator in the above example, and 50MW of power is dispatched, you would get paid $150/MWh for 50MW of generation, if 150MW is dispatched, you would get paid $300/MWh for 150MW of generation. (subjects to minimum output levels for your assets as specified in bid).

One of the key points is that cost of generation isn't linked to the bid value. Generators will bit in whatever they think is most profitable. For say a diesel power plant, generally you would bid in the marginal cost of generation, so you get dispatched when you break even, and make profits, if the next bidder in the stack gets deployed at a higher price. This gets a bit more complicated with hydro storage, Where if you run flat out now, you will run out of water (in anywhere from a couple of hours (Something like Clyde dam), or a few weeks (say waikato river)). In this case, you want to hold back water if you think the price will be higher in the near future. These assets will be bid in as available, but at a high price. Note a lot of assets you see on the public charts aren't available. Wind capacity is no use if there is no wind, stuff is always down for maintenance, and big thermal plants often take a long time (days) to start up, and shut down.

Further complicating the matter, if the country is drawing say 6GW, and you control say 2GW of capacity, with your competitors controlling 5GW, you essentially have the power to set the price to whatever you want.

Electricity demand increases while it is cold, moving us up the bid stack, and increasing the odds that certain players will exploit their market power to influence their prices.

One think to consider it that most of the big industry players are well hedged (or their customers demand roughly match their generation capacity). In this case, the a high / low market price is not as important as optimizing the outcome of their various hedge engagements.

If you want to see how a power market can go wrong, look up Enron in California. In short they controlled enough of the market to manipulate prices (but were restricted by regulations) the decided the profit optimizing outcome was to take a bunch of power plants offline for unscheduled maintenance, therefor causing rolling blackouts, and sending prices to the sky for their remaining assets. Obviously a bad outcome for consumers.

Aredwood

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#2046612 30-Jun-2018 23:46

As above, the power companies are there to make a profit, and are not a charity. If prices stay high for too long, someone will build another power station to take advantage of the high prices. But you then have the resource management act and various environmental groups making it more difficult to build new power stations (who still complain even if you want to build renewable generation). And it seems to be a never ending story, as to wether the Tiwai point smelter will close down or not.

And there is no system in the market to reward companies for making spare capacity available. For example, coal and diesel generation. When there is an excess of water, the hydro generators let rip, and no coal or diesel generation needed.But there is always a cost to make generation capacity available, even if it is not needed. So such generators have to exploit the market when they can to make a profit. Especially when they don't know how much power they will generate in a fortnights time, let alone in the next financial year.

Yet they provide an essential service. Even though I don't like fossil fuel generation. It is still better than rolling blackouts. And used right, it can actually reduce carbon emissions. By allowing hydro generators to generate more power now, instead of saving water just in case the weather becomes unfavorable in the future.

There needs to be a system where they get paid to make capacity available. In exchange for offering their generation at lower prices. Less crazy high wholesale prices, better security of supply, and generation owners will have better income certainty.

And this also leads onto why splitting capacity charges out from per unit fees is a good thing. As dry year capacity payments are the ideal thing to be paid for with capacity based charges.

luckiestmanalive

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#2047368 2-Jul-2018 11:58

Some really good points being made in the last two posts. I just want to respond to two potential changes:

1. Why not pay generators their bid price instead of the marginal bid price?

2. Why not pay directly pay generators to hold capacity in reserve?

The first suggestion is often brought up because it intuitively seems like a better approach. The idea is that it would reduce the amount generators get paid for their generation, which lowers the cost of wholesale electricity to retailers who could pass those savings on to consumers. In fact, the contract market works like this, already. However, the rates that we consumers can get from retailers are not equal to the costs of generating electricity. We face rates that are closer to the marginal rate or we would face power cuts due to generators not receiving revenue sufficient to keep generation around for dry years or the odd bad day.

That brings us to the second suggestion. Why not have consumers pay generators to hold more capacity in reserve? This is an approach that most of the rest of the world's electricity markets employ. This idea would reduce the amount of times prices go high because there would be more generation lying around. The problem is that, this would have no effect on dry-year price risks. It would simply change the way the hydro generators release their water to generate electricity - we would still have the same number of dry years and consumers would be no better or worse off.

Paying upfront for extra capacity to reduce spot prices is a valid trade off in non-hydro dominated countries. However, it isn't obvious why consumers are better off by this arrangement. I don't buy the argument that the market to provide reserve capacity is more competitive than a spot market.

Incidentally, I don't know why the hydro generators would allow price spikes to occur if they can shift their water allowance for the day around. They should be allocating more water to those periods where the prices are highest, thereby causing prices to equalise, somewhat. Perhaps the demand forecast is having trouble adjusting to the changeover to winter temperatures and demand?

nickb800

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#2048684 4-Jul-2018 06:57

I'm looking to switch from Flick to Genesis. I am on a triple saver tariff with flick (peak/off-peak/night). However based on my smart meter screen and the EA registry, my meter is configured as day/night. The EA registry shows me on the triple saver tariff though. Genesis want to charge $180 to put me on triple saver tariff as they say my meter will need reconfiguring.

It seems that Flick are able to offer variable tariffs based on aggregating my half hourly usage, whereas Genesis insist on me having 3x 'virtual' meters to record usage on each tariff. Doesn't seem to bother the lines company either way (Electra). I would have thought that the half hourly data is subject to the same rigour/auditing so I struggle to understand the problem.

Has anyone navigated through this problem before?

tdgeek

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#2048687 4-Jul-2018 07:14

nickb800: I'm looking to switch from Flick to Genesis. I am on a triple saver tariff with flick (peak/off-peak/night). However based on my smart meter screen and the EA registry, my meter is configured as day/night. The EA registry shows me on the triple saver tariff though. Genesis want to charge $180 to put me on triple saver tariff as they say my meter will need reconfiguring.

It seems that Flick are able to offer variable tariffs based on aggregating my half hourly usage, whereas Genesis insist on me having 3x 'virtual' meters to record usage on each tariff. Doesn't seem to bother the lines company either way (Electra). I would have thought that the half hourly data is subject to the same rigour/auditing so I struggle to understand the problem.

Has anyone navigated through this problem before?

Im looking at Genesis as a post here says they have day rate and a night/all weekend rate, great. But when I looked at their site they have a myriad of plans but light on what they are. To me it was mainly jargon, low on description, unless I missed something

Our home is 2010, I assume that would cater for whatever meter requirements are needed for day/night-weekend?

nickb800

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#2048693 4-Jul-2018 07:25

tdgeek:

nickb800: snip

Im looking at Genesis as a post here says they have day rate and a night/all weekend rate, great. But when I looked at their site they have a myriad of plans but light on what they are. To me it was mainly jargon, low on description, unless I missed something

Our home is 2010, I assume that would cater for whatever meter requirements are needed for day/night-weekend?

Yeah they don't make it easy.

In Genesis land:

Classic = low users

Household = normal user (>8000/9000kwh per year)

Flexible plan = no contract

eSaver = direct debit and email bills only, new customers, 12mo contract (but really sharp rates)

I have a 2017 smart meter, which spits out half hourly usage data, but essentially Genesis want the meter configured to calculate the peak/offpeak/night usage internally (because this is more reliable than Genesis's computer system adding up the half hour periods???)

Edit: Meter configuration means re-programming in-situ, rather than replacement

tdgeek

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#2048696 4-Jul-2018 07:30

nickb800:

tdgeek:

nickb800: snip

Im looking at Genesis as a post here says they have day rate and a night/all weekend rate, great. But when I looked at their site they have a myriad of plans but light on what they are. To me it was mainly jargon, low on description, unless I missed something

Our home is 2010, I assume that would cater for whatever meter requirements are needed for day/night-weekend?

Yeah they don't make it easy.

In Genesis land:

Classic = low users

Household = normal user (>8000/9000kwh per year)

Flexible plan = no contract

eSaver = direct debit and email bills only, new customers, 12mo contract (but really sharp rates)

I have a 2017 smart meter, which spits out half hourly usage data, but essentially Genesis want the meter configured to calculate the peak/offpeak/night usage internally (because this is more reliable than Genesis's computer system adding up the half hour periods???)

Edit: Meter configuration means re-programming in-situ, rather than replacement

Thanks

I dug deeper. Night is midnight till 8am. I thought it may have been something like 9pm to 7am, but having said that, weekends as well is great, Im looking at solar PV, so solar for the day and night/weekend rates seem a nice option

pogo

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#2048761 4-Jul-2018 09:38

It seems the Huntly outage has not finished. It was:

And now:

pogo

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#2048763 4-Jul-2018 09:41

tdgeek:

nickb800: I'm looking to switch from Flick to Genesis. I am on a triple saver tariff with flick (peak/off-peak/night). However based on my smart meter screen and the EA registry, my meter is configured as day/night. The EA registry shows me on the triple saver tariff though. Genesis want to charge $180 to put me on triple saver tariff as they say my meter will need reconfiguring.

It seems that Flick are able to offer variable tariffs based on aggregating my half hourly usage, whereas Genesis insist on me having 3x 'virtual' meters to record usage on each tariff. Doesn't seem to bother the lines company either way (Electra). I would have thought that the half hourly data is subject to the same rigour/auditing so I struggle to understand the problem.

Has anyone navigated through this problem before?

Im looking at Genesis as a post here says they have day rate and a night/all weekend rate, great. But when I looked at their site they have a myriad of plans but light on what they are. To me it was mainly jargon, low on description, unless I missed something

Our home is 2010, I assume that would cater for whatever meter requirements are needed for day/night-weekend?

What I would like to know is if Genesis offer the low night rate only for the meter connected to the hot water, or whether is applies to all power used between certain time. I run a heat pump and change the electric car overnight, so it would be critical that those are included. The timings for this are important too. 11pm-6am is not good enough, but it would be interesting if they could match Flick's off-peak hours (9pm-7am, and all weekend). I doubt it.

zerkms

124 posts

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#2048765 4-Jul-2018 09:44

pogo:

What I would like to know is if Genesis offer the low night rate only for the meter connected to the hot water, or whether is applies to all power used between certain time. I run a heat pump and change the electric car overnight, so it would be critical that those are included. The timings for this are important too. 11pm-6am is not good enough, but it would be interesting if they could match Flick's off-peak hours (9pm-7am, and all weekend). I doubt it.

I'm a former Genesis customer, I have gas heated water and I did have a day/night configured meter with genuine night rates with genesis (and it actually was them who reconfigured my meter to have day/night).

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