New Zealand set a new record of renewable electricity use in the June quarter.
Figures in the New Zealand Energy Quarterly show 91% of electricity in that three-month period was generated by renewable means such as hydro, wind and geothermal.
The long-term average for renewable electricity is around 85%.
“This is the highest renewable (number) for any June quarter since records began in 1980,” says Mike Hayward, a senior official at the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE).
“Hydro generation was up by 25.2% on the June 2022 quarter, while coal generation was down 71.7% and gas generation was down 45.7%.”
These developments follow a policy of the current government’s that the electricity sector should aim to have its product 100% renewable by 2030.
However, expert consensus would indicate these figures do not constitute any real victory. Climate change experts have warned repeatedly that the weather will be highly variable under emerging environmental conditions. That means the well-documented deluges of the past nine months might not be replicated in the next nine months, so hydro dams which are full this year might be empty next year.
There have been multiple warnings about New Zealand’s electricity vulnerability even under current conditions of windy weather and heavy rainfall. These came from Transpower in May, again in June and for a third time in August. In addition, several energy groups wrote to all main political parties last month saying consistent energy policies are vital for economic progress.
The thrust of their arguments was that renewable electricity is desirable but not reliable on its own, because the weather can change quickly, leaving wind turbines idle and hydro dams empty. But back-up systems, such as the Huntly power station, are not always nimble enough to fill in the gaps in quick time.
A week ago, an umbrella group, Energy Resources Aotearoa, published a warning that New Zealand was still exposed to risk, saying the danger of electricity shortages has actually increased since Transpower’s first warning.
Its executive John Carnegie, says the worries issued a week ago still stand. That is despite his approval of the MBIE data in principle.
“It’s fantastic that we are reaching such high levels of renewable electricity, but that does not obviate the need for thermal back up,” he says.
“And those numbers do not speak to half hour by half hour availability of electricity, which is what we are concerned about.”
Carnegie says having insufficient thermal back up means the system is exposed to potential shortages of electricity.
He says fast-acting gas-fired peaking plants are the best way to go. The Huntly power plants by contrast take too long to warm up, so by the time they are fully operational, a windfarm can have shut down, and started up again, as a spell of calm weather passes.
The Minister of Energy and Resources Megan Woods was approached for comment on this story.
58 Comments
You are right - pumped storage is a lot cheaper than batteries. It is used for load shifting, not dry year reserve, chalk and cheese stuff. It also needs high baseload thermal or nuke stations that can't be stop/ started or even turned down to fill it. That is why those other countries that have a thermal base or big grid connections to it have or are building them. And it is why it isn't relevant for NZ.
Fast acting biomass powered plants would be even better. Spread around the country to provide supply in extreme weather events.
But the real problem is the power industry just wants to carry on as they are.And of course sell as much power as they can.Working with big consumers to balance out peak demand , or reduce demand, is not really considered. Though the recent NZ Steel agreement apparently does have load shearing in place.
That is another option , overbuild renewables , and have discretionary loads in place , that can be turned off when peak demand hits. such loads would be replacing fossil fuel use now, for example dairy factory boilers / heating requirements.
The Tiwai aluminium smelter also signed a deal to free up power at peak times:
Meridian and NZAS Demand Response Agreement - 2023-2024 | Meridian Energy
And mine Bitcoin with the excess to provide an income to offset the cost of the infrastructure.
If your a Bitcoin convert or not it has a value and mining can be turned on/off very quickly.
That model is already being used in other countries, usually it's used where electricity is cheaper to produce, but I don't see an issue with using excess renewable energy. Some income is better than nothing.
Solar is useful, but only works when the sun is out. All this dense residential infill housing will cause shadow on southern properties making solar redundant.
Management of water levels in the lakes should be removed from the power companies as they are creating the low water levels to boost electricity prices.
Great comment. But not 'redundant'; just less optimal. In the end, we will be operating on solar and solar derivatives, only. Optimising for that, is the only game in town. And it has to be built - whatever we go for - before the FF leave us. Which is now.
The problem is that we still rate our problem in terms of BAU and dollars. Reality says we must fit in with the physics.
"The system" want's to perpetuate massive generation facilities and captive price taking multiple consumers.
Distributed generation is the way forward. Onslow is dinosaur thinking, but it keeps consumers captive.
My solar is grid connected, but overall I send twice out the gate as what comes in. Yeah yeah, I know it's cloudy sometimes but each spark going out keeps another litre in Pukaki.
Flying into Auckland I see vast hectares of warehouse roofs. All with the lights on inside. All locked up after 5pm. That could be different.
And with supportive legislation roads like mine of about 30 sharing houses could be near self sufficient. Certainly reduce grid demands, and contribute to year on year solutions.
Might even use some smart AI to manage down the road. But that's too hard (sarc)
to do what? have an unsafe system of extension leads and batteries around the house?
tenants aren't allowed to touch the electrical system. and there are safety considerations made in the installation of solar panels too.
myself, i'd love a 500W vertical wind generator sitting on the corner of the deck, as well as solar. and at our last place, we had an old dam in the hill we could've used for trickle charging as well. same issue though - the electrical system is not mine to touch.
Work in the Solar industry. Grid scale solar is efficient only where solar farms can be located near existing substations. Otherwise the long transmission lines to connect to the grid make it cost prohibitive. This is already happening and we should have another GWp of power supplied by solar in the next five years if councils grant the consents.
Residential solar does have a place to. Not many people realise that around 12% of our electricity is lost in the distribution network. By generating at the point of consumption this can be saved. The costs of Solar are usually modular so there isn't an economy of scales saving by thinking bigger is better, like there is with Hydro.
Its worse than that too. In the sunniest places in the country (Nelson/Marlborough) there are huge warehouses/supermarkets/carparks which all have to blast aircon over the summer. If they captured 20% of the sun falling onto the rooves/carparks, they would be virtually energy independent and wouldn't be sucking down from lakes in summer.
We really have to do better with solar, its a great offset to keep water in the dams in the summer months.
If distributed generation (I assume you mean solar) is so good, why do South Australia and California with their very high domestic solar penetration have both the highest power prices and the lowest reliability in their regions? And they have a lot more sunshine hours than us.
Record breaking production of renewable electricity creates worries over power reliability.
Exactly what I expected to happen. Theres no free lunch here, independant energy engineers have been advising this for decades when the politics said to aim for 100%. Dry summer, brown outs in winter.
So why the high dividends not invested in increasing production or transmission? At 85% to 91% renewables you do not see the supply going up, the grid becoming more reliable, Huntley modernizing, or kwh prices for consumers decreasing. We pay high consumer rates with no promised increased efficiency. It looks like just another sneaky tax on consumers so as to fund a national rort.
hell. We have keyboard warriors on full go today. Knowledgeable on solar, bio-mass generation, distribution, generation, grid transmission, dry years. Perhaps some back of the match box financial calcs would help.
suspect all of them would add considerably to our electricty costs
I wonder what the Electricty Authority and Transpower have been up to. Perhaps all the generation, transmission problems have been pointed out to M Woods and Labour have been chewing the cud on this.
I don't expect any political party to do much about it either. The generators unlikely to do much until they know what's going on with the infamous Onslow.
There's a wind project the govt could get off the ground with sufficient subsidy. Tied up with a Maori Trust/Company. The Glenbrook steel company turned it down a few years ago. The T and C's were too onerous. I'm sure the Labour's Maori caucus could put there oar in to make it a goer favourable to them. There's a Govt Green investment fund of some sorts.
The generators are building generation right now - geothermal for Contact, solar for Genesis, wind for Meridian and Mercury, and grid-scale batteries for Meridian and Contact (not generation, but relevant).
Why would the government want to subsidise your favored option when things are already being built, with no subsidy? The only government action required is to keep the pedal down on the cap and trade scheme making coal generation unaffordable.
Cos the gentailers only do it as a reactionary measure and prefer to have power prices high, so limit supply as much as possible to make sure they can maintain maximum ROI of current assets. They don't build in resiliency, that works directly against their profit motive.
The government has a different role to play, most of the time it does it OK, but with poor looking forward, cos 3 year election cycles. Their role is to ensure electricity supplies are uninterrupted forever, grow the countries supply and use of green electricity which maintains the economy, plus make sure the gentailers act responsibly and don't overcharge the population ridiculously. No reason the government shouldn't build huge batteries (Onslow or similar) and subsidise peoples solar to force better behaviour from gentailers. Its been done with reasonable success in other jurisdictions too (Australia has a good scheme).
Yeah, I wouldn't object to the government funding Onslow, or some incentives for residential power generation (would prefer to see more funding for power saving methods like insulation, or solar-thermal, first). Much better than the EV incentives.
I do object to subsidising people building wind farms - the economics already stack up. I think it's the Nats wanting to streamline resource consents for renewable generation? That makes more sense to me - smooth the way and let people get on with it.
https://www.eeca.govt.nz/co-funding/insulation-and-heater-grants/warmer… Some philanthropic trusts also grant to add support to this scheme.
Gen III+ or Gen IV nuclear power please. New designs have an operating lifespan of 60+ years and can be designed from the outset for safe decommissioning in the future. We might decide against nuclear power as a nation, but there has to be a real debate with serious pragmatic discussion first.
Yeah, that's a big issue if we were to ever build nuclear in NZ. Needs to have plenty of water available for cooling (near the sea or big river). Should be near the big electricity users. Best place would be around Mercer in the Waikato IMO. Near enough to Auckland, far enough from the sea so Tsunamis aren't a major issue. Next to the Waikato river for cooling. Far enough from major population centres. Reasonably protected/protectable from strikes if we entered a war.
Would anyone want it there? Dreaming. Also we don't need it with the exploitable resources we already have. Just restart project Aqua and do it, for instance, for more base load. Just build the original Castle Hill wind farm. There's also enormous untapped thermal resource still in the Taupo volcanic zone. We also have mega amounts of under utilised solar capacity on our house/factory/mall rooftops.
Basic problem is that 'market forces' are disrupted by greedy private generators. Paying high dividends from privitized generators is just another wealth transfer from citizens to investors in NZ. The wholesale power price is dictated by the most expensive generator - Huntley - by law. So all private companies have no interest in making Huntley generation cheaper or more efficient. Nor is it 'economic' for them to invest and actually build on the 7 consented generation projects. They just hold the consents as 'land investments'. It is a prima facia case of how Crony Capitalism can hold back progress by limiting supply. Most of the OECD do not allow utilities to limit supply so as to increase profits - NZ is an outlier.
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