There may a bit of political leaning showing here ;) but Ms Shipley's association with Mainzeal - and its demise - still rankles with some!
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/n...ectid=10867172
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There may a bit of political leaning showing here ;) but Ms Shipley's association with Mainzeal - and its demise - still rankles with some!
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/n...ectid=10867172
I was 11/12 years old when she was in power, but I still remember people weren't very happy with her then. The Mainzeal collapse is interesting. Looks like I have some reading to do.
I'm only vaguely keeping track of what the analysts are saying about 2018, and the impression I got was that there is "potentially" a shortfall of MW with the removal of Southdown / Otahuhu B / 2 remaining Huntly units. So what is going to fill this shortfall? I.e. which of the gentailers is going to be the one that stumps up some capital and pushes one of their projects? I had a look at this document from the EA (http://www.mbie.govt.nz/info-service...ion-cost-model) today and interesting to see that Contact Energy have the next cheapest 4-5 generation options in the list by LRMC. Or is it that they are just the most optimistic with their pricing? Also, I thought they had all but ruled out their HMR windfarm being built... and I can't see them going for a new CCGT on the Otahuhu site, so that just leaves Tauhara and the Hawea gates.
The cheapest of all those proposals still has a LRMC of almost $80 per MWh. No-one is going to build any new generation until the wholesale price reaches that value. At present the average wholesale price is around $65 per MWh and is unlikely to rise above that as long as we are over saturated with wind generation. The geothermal options listed are all base load and these also tend to lower the wholesale price, and are unable to assist in meeting short term peak demand.
The best options for new generation do not even appear on the MBIE list. probably because no company can consider them. These are the Onslow pumped storage scheme (1200 MW at a cost of $3B) or Hawea pumped storage (120 MW, but not permitted under the Wanaka conservation act).
Pumped storage will support double its installed capacity of wind generation without destabilising the grid.
In August (https://www.nzx.com/files/attachments/221085.pdf) it says they sold 880GWh of energy and produced 868GWh of energy, so I really don't think they have such a large surplus of practically useful* generation.
*I.e. generation that isn't ruinously expensive to run, like running your gas turbines / CCGT at minimum load, or trucking a whole lotta diesel down to Whirinaki to fire up those jet engines strapped to a lump of concrete (credit to Mark Binns for that phrase there).
I think at times contact will buy power when its really cheap-cheaper than burning gas-don't forget contact have a massive storage potential.
They can then burn gas when prices are such they can make bigger profits.Could be saving it for the El Nino drought that's looking highly likely