On Mon, 17 Mar 2025 03:43:58 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro
<
ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
Watts his name ...
An interesting article today -
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/new-energy-minister-simon-watts-warned-of-risk-of-outages-business-closures-in-challenging-sector/N27BREOSQBF67GAQCTGW2MOI6Y/
That article covers a briefing he received as incoming Minister, and
gives advice about prices and supply. Unfortunately the industry has
incentives to just meet supply, preferably through having to use
Huntly coal fired station every so often - it keeps prices and hence
dividends very high. Rather than just accepting that those companies
are the only way of arranging more commercial generation, the
government should insist that 'fair' payments be made for generation
fed back to the grid, to encourage private generation to be directed
to the network when not needed - thus for example schools could
benefit from solar on their roofs and have generation available during holidays. Also the government should deliberately invest directly in
some generation, or alternatively penalise any generator that has
resource consents and does not use them within a reasonable time.
At present we have cartel designed to maximise dividends to owners -
just under half being largely to large investors, some overseas . . .
I understand a project to create a wind-farm off the Taranaki Coast
has been stopped because of plans for sea-bed mining - it appears that political considerations may be adversely affecting sensible overall development
No wonder that the government is now needing to subside fuel for
increasing numbers of people who could not otherwise afford power,
that two factories have already closed with another closure likely in
Auckland. Still, this government doesn't care about the unemployed -
treat them badly enough and the skilled workers will just go to
another country . . .
Another possibility (not mentioned in the briefing paper) would be to restructure the industry to require separation between generation and distribution.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)