Its more than "High"... Its getting out of hand, 

2 Large Industrial users have shut down, Tiwai has pulled 1/3 of its load and smaller retail power companies are going bust...

There is about to be a huge reckoning in the power market, and those retailers without their own generation ( or significant hedges) are gonna be burnt to the ground....

South Islands Droughts (usually from El nino) are generally bad for pwer generation, this year's Winter has been very dry in the South, 

A senior government minister says the government is exploring the option of intervening into the electricity market - RNZ

Behodar:

 

A senior government minister says the government is exploring the option of intervening into the electricity market - RNZ

 

Long, long overdue but I doubt much will happen.

It's in the interest of the "gentailers" to keep supply scarce in order to keep prices high. 

Stronger regulation is desperately required, but will it happen?

A good start would be to break up the gentailers: Either generate, distribute, or retail electricity. Only one of these should be allowed.

John19612:

 

Stronger regulation is desperately required, but will it happen?

 

A good start would be to break up the gentailers: Either generate, distribute, or retail electricity. Only one of these should be allowed.

 

Is there a reason why we haven't gone down that route already? Seems like a no-brainer. 

John19612:

 

Stronger regulation is desperately required, but will it happen?

 

A good start would be to break up the gentailers: Either generate, distribute, or retail electricity. Only one of these should be allowed.

 

And de-privatise the generator parts of the gentailers at the same time, putting them all into a single entity so that the vast majority generation side of the electricity business is run as a single network.
You could call it "Electricorp" or "NZED Co"

PolicyGuy:

 

John19612:

 

Stronger regulation is desperately required, but will it happen?

 

A good start would be to break up the gentailers: Either generate, distribute, or retail electricity. Only one of these should be allowed.

 

 

And de-privatise the generator parts of the gentailers at the same time, putting them all into a single entity so that the vast majority generation side of the electricity business is run as a single network.
You could call it "Electricorp" or "NZED Co"

 

1000% agreed. Natural monopolies should not be left to the market to manage. All that happens is the market extracts as much value as possible, under invests in maintenance and renewal, then abandons the assets for the taxpayer/government to deal with.

TBF Governments can be rubbish as well, but at least the incentive is more aligned with providing a service than extracting a profit.

Behodar:

 

A senior government minister says the government is exploring the option of intervening into the electricity market - RNZ

 

I seem to remember that the Government is a major shareholder in two or three of the power companies, has that changed?

John19612:

 

Stronger regulation is desperately required, but will it happen?

 

A good start would be to break up the gentailers: Either generate, distribute, or retail electricity. Only one of these should be allowed.

 

Indeed, very much like Telecom was broken up into Chorus (Distribuition) and Spark (Retail). 

CokemonZ:

 

TBF Governments can be rubbish as well, but at least the incentive is more aligned with providing a service than extracting a profit.

 

No,

Government monopolies have an incentive to ensure their preservation, and that as little as possible changes, 

The experience of Government monopolies of NZ Rail/ NZPO and the Health system should give many people pause about wanting to create a new "Government power company"

The Last government's actions in banning new oil and gas fired power stations, bringing forward the 100% renewable electricity target to 2030 and deterring any major private investment in Generation by promoting the huge "singing and dancing" project Onslow as the solution to all our woes have all contributed to getting us to where we are today, 

But the biggest driver is the lack of rain in the South Island, which has happened on a regular basis since when ever,  under both nationalised and privatised power networks, 

AND for those who can remember, in 1992 when we still had a Nationalised power Network we suffered with government Mandated Brownouts, 

I remember sitting in a empty government department manning the phones telling callers that the office was shut today to save power and all the staff were at home in the dark....

"Energy Minister Pete Hodgson calling for the public to cut consumption by 10 per cent and the State sector by 15 per cent a week through to October. Then, it was state-owned enterprise Electricorp, the nation’s sole electricity generator, which called for nationwide cuts of 10 per cent, later raised to 15 per cent, to avoid rationing.

Auckland region power boards responded by cutting households’ water heating, shops dimmed their lights, businesses cut back wherever they could and stretches of the Auckland motorway system were left dark in their quietest hours.

Pubs closed early; TVNZ and TV3 moved their nightly close-down time forward by an hour or so; an interisland ferry hooked its generators to the national grid and the Government looked at cloud-seeding options from Australia.

Nationwide savings of around 20 per cent were achieved and luckily the rains came in July, averting the crisis.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/how-we-learned-the-lessons-from-1992/NLFVIOGURGV7GAL3XCHNWBX4ZM/

John19612:

 

A good start would be to break up the gentailers

 

Gentailers, shouldn't that be genitailiers?

They all seem to have us grabbed by them/

Just nationalise everything. Its simple (but expensive). If you ever want examples of how not to do things, you only have to look to the other side of the planet - the UK

We also need to consider what is a 'service' vs a business/product.

e.g. Health is a service in NZ. We don't expect it to make profit (but it's a business in the USA for example).

Should Power be similar in that we don't expect a profit, but expect our lights to stay on and business to continue to operate and the capacity to be built i.e. increase supply to decrease pricing.