Genesis CEO says Megan Woods' finger-pointing over Monday night's blackouts is 'misguided'; Electricity generators explain why they weren't operating at full capacity

'Woods wanted to know whether generators faced "engineering" or "market" constraints.'

I think it's a government constraint.

Anyone else think this was a deliberate ploy by generators to jack prices up and to get the government to allow them to pollute more?

These 'renewable' energy sources should be called what they are, unreliables. No wind? No power. No sun? No power. It's utterly ridiculous that a first-world nation be subject to rolling blackouts.

God it's like the early 1990s - a country struggling with soaring living costs, deteriorating living standards and basic infrastructure creaking under its own weight. Bleak, I think, is the word the kids use.

Partially yes, as in other areas the current government is somewhat naive with regards to this industry. It's pretty simple that it's in the interests of generators (note not Transpower who simply run the grid) in the current market model to keep the amount of generation down so that electricity spot prices are higher - it just makes them more money so they're clearly incentivised to do so.

Hard to argue whether there's any cartel like behaviour but given last nights debacle - certainly there are enough generators engaged in this behaviour to drop generation (note not transmission capacity) far below where it could/should have been.

The market makers at the generators are playing games with this stuff (like turning off generation because of weeds lol) and peoples lives are being risked (ask someone on a ventilator how easy it is to breathe without one... which needs power...).

Normally they do this behind the scenes and only those in the game notice what's going on - but a sudden spike in demand like last night caught them out. Turn off this and that, generation drops, spot price rises... $$$. Unfortunately you can't turn on stuff fast enough if you bet the wrong way.

The Minister ought to be kicking off an immediate inquiry followed by heavy regulation and massive fines to force the generators to keep generation at certain levels (seasonally adjusted ofc) - but I very much doubt that there's the insight to the problem or guts to do what's necessary to solve.

A month or three ago Woods was watching the lake levels and prices. In the last week or so the lake levels SI returned to around about their long term average. She must have stopped watching. All of a sudden not enough generation resulting in a rolling blackout. Maybe she should have been watching the wind. I wonder what else she is watching?

Every few years we have issues with lack of supply, everyone wants to reep the benefitsts of infrastructure but no one wants to fund it.

Probably be worse in future when everyone gets home and plugs their electric car in. An extra 5 or 10kw per vehicle used daily would absolutely crush the market.

SO typical of this Government. Great feel-good announcements about electric cars, and they can't even guarantee reliable supply for existing demand. All talk and no action - good for the UN.
Thankfully, at least, we have no Greens in Government, as they are one of the few things potentially more dangerous than climate change itself.
But this Government will still win the next elections, unless National wakes up, starts doing real opposition, and it stops being the mouthpiece of housing specuvestors.

Nowhere have I seen anyone suggest that the solution is to reduce demand. The majority of the demand yesterday will have been for heating - heatpumps, bar heaters, fan heaters etc.

Retrofit existing housing stock to much higher insulation standards and aim for passive solar heating with the view that demand for input (the national grid) is lessened and more even.

The comment from the PM that"Even if it really was a peak on an extremely cold night, it is still not good enough that we weren't able to warm our homes.” just shows how out of touch with external inputs she really is.

Enerlytica analyst John Kidd estimates Genesis has been burning about 250,000 tonnes of coal at Huntly each month since it took a third, coal-fired turbine out of storage in February. It is mainly subbituminous coal imported from Indonesia. Genesis chief executive Marc England says the calculation is probably in the right ballpark.
That coal typically creates two tonnes of carbon-dioxide for every tonne burnt. So that would be 500,000 tonnes of emissions a month. Equivalent to approx. 1 million 3.2l diesel Ford Ranger utes travelling 2000km a month. Or 1.8 million Toyota Corolla 2.0l petrol hatchbacks doing the same.

The answer is to remove "commercial" requirements completely - nationalise the whole industry, so that energy supply is the determining requirement, rather than moneymaking. This would also make climate change responses more straightforward.

SIGH SIGH -- green environmental courts still blocking new hydro and geothermal options -- government still bans our own clean coal but imports dirty coal from abroad - and we want all cars to be EV's -- not much talk about how we reduce demand - perhaps insulate Kainga Ora's properties to the same standard as teh private sector - double glazing as a standard in teh building code - etc - half baked energy policies made on the steps of the beehive bannign future oil and gas - but little support for wind wave hydro and geothermal

This is what Transpower said."So we put out a forecast in the morning in terms of what the evening peak would be. That allows generators to work out what offers to put in of their generation to meet that peak."We then issued the warning notice late afternoon to indicate that it was getting extremely tight in terms of the quantity of generation to meet demand and then just before 6pm last night there was insufficient generation to meet demand so we issued what was called a grid emergency." So the response from Genesis should be to crank up the 3rd generator so they were ready for the predicted evening peak. For them a nice earn from what would have been a high spot price. But they didn't for some reason. Has the recent publicity about the amount of coal being burned at Huntly caused their main shareholder to tell them via back channels to reduce the coal burn?

Given the privatisation and resultant profit seeking of the electricity sector they are incentivised to not over build capacity as the ROI is too low. It's much more profitable to run close to the limit and increase prices when demand gets close to the available supply.

For short term peaks such as these there will be some taking a close look at grid scale battery installations as unlike the fossil fuel plants quoted above they can respond to additional load in milliseconds, much quicker than even hydro. A battery like that would have made a killing last night with prices going above $100,000 per MWh

It really makes no sense. Whatever their excuses for the North Island supply, the DC Link was only operating at half capacity. The SI lakes have plenty of capacity and the generation capacity is more than enough to utilize all the DC Link capacity. They will just pour though a whole bunch of stored water. Hydro power can be bought up to full capacity very quickly, seconds to minutes. Does this mean that the operators of the SI generators were choosing to not supply. Surely there have to be rules that make this impossible. I get the impression that there is a bit of tension over what is going to happen to the SI generators after the smelter closes. (I interpret that crazy green hydrogen proposal in that light.) Are they trying to be smart and flex their muscles and intimidate the government? The whole structure of the industry is crazy and bad enough running under the traditional older energy world. Trying to change it to address the issues that it needs to in the world of global warming will be next to impossible. The Government needs to use the matters raised in the recent industry review as an opportunity to de-fang the Gentailers and stop the wasteful market abuse that we have witnessed. It needs to get back as close to possible to the centralized control that can be run for maximum efficiency and minimum emissions instead of maximizing profits.

Just like to thank everyone freezing last night and having cold showers this morning that the Auckland CBD and suburban street lights continued to shine brightly through the night - cheers

I don't care what caused it, I have enjoyed watching Jacinda and Woods Squirm......

Sooner or later the people of NZ will realise that a fish rots from the head .....

This is good news, as we know that nothing ever gets done, and then only poorly until it turns into a crisis.

The point to take from all this is do not rely on the Govt. to look after you, in spite of them implementing policies that make us more dependent on them. They can't look after themselves, let alone the people they are meant to represent.

Build more energy-efficient, and self-sustainable properties, etc. so you don't need someone else to look after you for this type of basic need.

Whatever the excuses, it was a massive failure of the systems imo. It is not as though NZ hasn't had electricity problems in the past either to learn from.

Just how will NZ function at net zero carbon emissions?
Last night, the coldest night this year, saw evening power cuts in parts of the country as demand exceeded the generating capacity that was operating at the time (there is supposedly adequate generation capacity, just some wasn't being used). To me that indicates a lack of resilience in the electricity generation and distribution system.
I recognise we are in a climate crisis - change is urgently needed.
What I'm most concerned about is ensuring we have resilience as we transition to low/net-zero carbon emissions. That is, the capacity to keep our homes heated and the lights on. Without built in resilience, our democracy, our social cohesion, our economy will be threatened.
In the last 20 or so years we have increased reliance on electricity as the primary energy source. And when the electricity supply is disrupted, no heat, no light, can't cook. Not to mention disruption to commercial activities like eftpos and inventory management systems, and infrastructure elements like traffic lights.
My perception is that the core of our electricity generation and distribution was established in the 1940s, 50s, 60s and 70s. Then followed the Rogernomics/Ruth Richardson experiment of the 80s and 90s of not only little investment in increased generating capacity but also serious run down of the generating/distribution infrastructure though lack of investment in maintenance. The "free market economy" has not proved effective in this area. And in the meantime the population has almost doubled and electricity consumption increased by a factor of - I don't know. Last night was the highest peak demand recorded in NZ.
What can be done?
No point moaning about the current government, this situation is 30+ years in the making.
My thoughts:
First, de-politicise the transition to a net-zero carbon emissions objective. That transition will need some painful change to be carried by all NZ.
Second, divert a portion of the Covid recovery driven infrastructure funding away from urban roads and into expanding alternative energy production infrastructure (increased electricity generation and perhaps hydrogen).
Third, remove the profit and dividend requirements on SOE energy entities. Thereby reinforcing the status of energy as one of the basic foundations for our nation to function (along with health and education). Perhaps even nationalise the electricity sector again.
Fourth, incentivise investment in home energy generation, along the lines of insulation or the electric vehicle incentives. For example, a 50% subsidy for installation of solar generation on the roofs of homes. Coupled with an attractive price for feeding electricity back into the grid.
Those are just some of my thoughts. To transition to net-zero emissions we need to act as the team of 5 million. The Covid response has demonstrated that we can do it. That same cross-party leadership now needs to step up and apply themselves to this urgent need. Please get on with it.

Genesis said gale force winds pushed weeds into the intake of its hydro power station at Tokaanu.
Does that happen often? Peak wind gust in Taupo yesterday 57kph SW. On 3/8 it was 52kph on 4/8 it was 50kph on 7/8 it was 50kph all SW direction. Did it happen on any of those days? If it did then that would make it semi predictable and if you had a warning from Transpower the same day they they were predicting record peak demand for that evening. You would probably fire up your coal generator just in case.

Blame covid..move on.

2 minutes to fix the problem. Was this system broken as well.
https://www.duperon.com/wp-content/uploads/Genesis-Energy-Case-Study-SC…

This wasn’t a renewables problem. There was plenty of capacity. The problem was the gas and coal generation couldn’t respond (or didn’t want to) and the hydro down south wasn’t fully used. As people have pointed out it seems like a failure to supply rather than a lack of supply. And yes some power sources can’t start quickly but they still made a decision to withhold supply to increase the price.

It is unbelievable that there was no warning to the general public about the possibility of power outages from a lack of generation. Heads should roll for this.

The government needs to ensure that it has far better emergency plans for dealing with the situation where electricity consumption exceeds generation capacity.

The way that arbitrary power outages were imposed on the public, without warning, must never happen again.

At a minimum the public should be given a warning prior to the outages so that they can reduce electricity consumption & minimise any impact.

Subsidies for solar batteries, like they do in Australia would also help the country reduce its peak load. If the government was serious about climate change it would have offered subsidies on solar systems during this term of government.

During the power outage we were able to keep essential services going with a solar battery. This avoided the problem of being without power.

No-one has spotted the bleedingly obvious: two almost instantaneous generation outages caused a cascade effect through the system.

1 Tokaanu tripped out (the weeds may be the cause but the trip was the real issue) so 115Mw vanishes. That's what 'trip' means-instant big red switch flicked.

2 Wind dropped. 500Mw down to 280Mw, so 220Mw vanishes, just a bit more slowly.

Some context: NZ total demand in mid winter is north of 6000Mw, so having 335Mw go west in a matter of seconds to minutes means slightly over 5%.

The usual response to instantaneous outages is having spinning, synchronised reserve generation available: gas peakers, hydro, geothermal (or any steam whether it be coal, wood chips, nuclear or oil fired). The first three were unavailable, and the coal unit needs a good half day to raise steam, reach safe operating temperatures, spin up, synchronise, and start contributing. Nothing instant....

If anything, it emphasizes the folly on relying on the non-dispatchables - wind and solar - in the depths of winter.

And if we want spinning, synchronised, reliable reserve on tap, get prepared to pay for it.......and swallow the dead rats of imported thermal coal, imported gas and new hydro (pumped or dammed, whatever). Or nuclear, the power which must not be named....

I notice Barbara Chapman is on the board of genesis and has replaced Jenny Shipley.She also on the board of the NZME(Herald and Hosking), Fletchers, The New Zealand Innitiative and previously the ASB).

Would be interesting if a journalist found some staff who had been forewarned of this.

One does have to wonder if this has been done as a stunt to show up labour and soften us up for higher prices....how will we be able to complain..at least we have power right?!

Is this where lobbying has got to in NZ? It looks suspect!

The overwhelming thing that comes across in the comments is people do not understand how things work, both on transmission and generation side. Most power stations can't start generating at the flick of a switch and the consents are a significant impediment to operational variability. For the grid, there is massive balancing needed in terms of MW, voltage and phase angle. All 3 are related and they have to be kept within very narrow limits. . The DC was limited running north because of the voltage issues. T
he NZ grid is not really capable of carrying the loads we expect of it at peak times, especially in the North Island Wellington to Whakamaru and most of South Island. To fix it needs money and the EA has turned down Transpower getting more money. New generation is expensive to build and operate - needs about $150/MW hour to be viable and no-one wants to commit with Onslow hanging there - just like it was Tiwai beforehand.

Just like the "water crisis" where the govt will take charge. This crisis and govt rhetoric is designed for the govt to take control of the power supply and distribution. Fully nationalised and will be shared with iwi. Throw in legacy media becoming an extension of govt and boom. Last piece is central bank digital currency and no banks within 18 months. Welcome to our new nz..

The only thing this Labout government is good at is making things worse.

About time we had some more proactive people managing the country. There should be a rule that says to be eligible to be an MP one must have had a job outside of politics.

I wouldn't be surprised to find this whole situation is probably engineered by the power companies to increase power prices again for the sucker end user