Update: This emergency has now ended.
Transpower has issued an emergency notice that extreme power conditions exist in the North Island.
They say there is insufficient generation for the current demand.
They say "if participant response across the North Island is insufficient, the system operator will manage demand to alleviate the Grid Emergency. The system operator may instruct the grid owner to disconnect feeders without further notice to connected parties."
Transpower said there was a fault on the HVDC cable which transfers electricity from the South Island to the North Island.
Some power was still flowing across the cable but a second fault could suddenly stop the flow of electricity, they said.
As the electricity regulator, we are confident that Transpower handled this morning's issues effectively and the impact on consumers was minimal. We continue to work with industry and Transpower to ensure the electricity sector is reliable for consumers.
— Electricity Authority Te Mana Hiko (@ElectricityAuth) October 6, 2022
72 Comments
Just in:
"Electricity operator Transpower has withdrawn a grid emergency that it issued in the North Island on Friday morning after power equipment carrying power from the South Island failed at one of the worst possible times."
That's the whole idea of selling shares in an asset/company isn't it? To bring in capital to invest in "capital" expense for increased output, production, growth, whatever, and provide the investors with a share of the increased return?
I thought National were the political party that were astute in business, but what projects have they started using this capital? I guess it's easy as a Government, but selling off shares in a private business and frittering away the funds on other things?
How convenient that the spot prices increase 10fold as a result. My source in the power industry tells me the gentailers have doubled their net profit in the last year anyway, looks like they're coming back for more. one cable just 'happened' to fail at the worst possible time? I'll let you decide on that one
Not sure if you're suggesting one of the gentailers committed industrial sabotage, or that they managed to twist the arm of Transpower (who actually run the HVDC) into turning off their equipment at high reputational cost, just to profit some gentailers. Neither seems plausible to me.
The net profit figures are quite deceptive and heavily influenced by Meridian selling their Australian assets (reporting a big profit), and derivative accounting by Genesis (big loss last year, big profit this year).
EV's will help grid stability, when charged off peak they help reduce the troughs making it easier for power suppliers to manage load. Also, there's 2 way charging where you can have your EV automatically feed the grid when the price spikes like crazy like it did this morning. EV's will be the solution to intermittent renewable energy.
@chebbo more EV's most certainly could help. People could get a text asking permission to take power from grid connected EV's to get through a temporary demand surge.
I just read the other day about a set-up, think it was California, where a fleet of electric school buses was being used for that purpose.
That doesn't solve the issue of insufficient power generation and infrastructure though, which is the actual issue here. Using people's cars as a giant emergency battery only works if they're all able to charge them up in the first place (and probably not even then; there are some massive assumptions being made here).
Hard to think of a country that doesn't have infrastructure issues every now and then. Luckily for us, they are manifesting as things like 'if a major fault at peak use time on a particularly cold day, you might have to reduce power use for an hour'. Pretty manageable.
Back in the UK there was a discussion every few years after a particularly hard frost about how many snow ploughs and gritters each council should have on hand. Essentially - how much more council tax would you be happy to pay to reduce that 0.1% chance of having an icy road? Sometimes a failure or near-miss is the rational outcome of a cost-benefit analysis when the alternative is to massively overengineer every system we have.
We do have a real lack of leadership in this critical area of infrastructure
Govt could be the emergency provider - or contract owner of that back up generation
Improved gas supply would help but politics destroyed that option
New geothermal would be good
Much better use of the smart meters already fitted
Forcing generators out of the retail market may also assist but work needed here as to best option
Separate ownership of the coal and gas generation is what Contact and Genesis want. It's a tricky position - we need their generation until we have a better alternative, but with a limited lifespan and dwindling use why would Genesis keep up the investment in keeping Huntly running? An NZ ThermalCo run as a public body to ensure supply could be the solution.
Alternative take - Huntly is old and run down, and paying for the carbon credits is too expensive so Genesis want the government to bail them out so they can invest in renewables instead.
My weather station recorded an all time low temp of about 1.8 Deg C at 2am this morning. Personally I left the heatpump on all night at 20C because it was 5 Deg C before the sun even went down yesterday, probably the coldest night in 2 years down here in Tauranga. Better turn the heatpump off now.
Humble brag. I've got a 16kw ducted AC system in my modest 3 bedroom brick and tile place so I can keep my house at 15 degrees in the middle of summer with all the windows and doors open so my beer doesn't get cold while I'm working on my rotaries in the garage ((both) idling, spitting out flames and fumes at the same time) whilst one of my 4 kids mows the lawns and the others dance around a bonfire eating red meat whilst watering the lawns with sprinklers in the middle of summer.
I'm thinking of getting a diesel generator as back up power and boiling plastic on the bonfire in a retort chamber for low quality fuel to power it.
We are on the cusp of buying thousands of electric cars under strong encouragement from the government. Where is the power coming from to power them. Where are the plans to upgrade the power supply network for them.
The crisis today illustrates that our county has no surplus renewable power on an annual basis, so these electric cars can only be powered by fossil fuel and so will not help reduce co2 emissions, if not increase them. nor do we have anything like an adequate network . Hybrids are the only sensible option we have to reduce emissions at the moment until we have an adequate 100% renewable generation system and a fit for purpose network. And that is without even considering the scarcity of Lithium production.
To give you some idea of the scale of what we face, the Vector AGM pointed out that currently the peak load for Auckland is currently about 1800 mega watts. With electric cars this will rise to over 5000 mega watts. With a smart controlled network this could be reduced to something in the order of 3500 mega watts.
The government are totally asleep at the wheel.
Cheers
Ah yes, hybrids, that'll do the trick. All of the moving parts and complexity of an ICE with the complexity and engineering challenges of an EV, in one simple package. Throw in smaller batteries that have to charged up and run down more often and you're definitely onto a winner there.
Looks pretty accurate to me. What's the point of having both ICE and Electric in one car ? Sure it may be a seller because it negates the "Range Anxiety" but its not a winner. The solution is smaller turbo charged cars with smaller engines and smaller electric cars. Until everything starts getting smaller and lighter instead of bigger and heavier we are stuffed.
All those comments above about gentailers just show they don't know what they are talking about, only their own prejudices. The problem was a harmonic filter at Haywards so they had to rapidly reduce power coming across on the DC. Happened about 5am and sorted about by 8:30 so they could then load back up and turn Whirinaki off. . That is Transpower's equipment and that company has always been 100% government owned.
When you have generation in the South Island and load in the north, you get these sort of problems. It won't be the last. This one was exacerbated by the big drop in wind generation overniight.
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