ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade Non-US Electrical Systems & Trades Transpower warned about price increases

You are quite right there Trumphy.

The centralisation of power to the bigger stations is one of the causes that we need big pylons to supply large loads over considerable distances. The smaller local stations supplied locally and may have had one 33 kV tie line to the grid.
Ok 33 kV means smaller poles etc. and less visible.

The goverment shut down Meremere around 1990 which was a coal fired station, there were plans at some stage to convert it to rubbisch burning mid 90's. It was stopped by the RMA. chance gone forever now to generate power and solve part of Aucklands rubbisch problems. Also the railway line nearby was great for transport the latter.

Marsden stations in Whangarei, were never fully utilised and Marsden B never ran as far as I know off.

some action needs to be taken soon to avoid future power shortages.

Ireland is in a similar situation we've a small isolated network that has extremely limited interconnectors to the UK and on to the rest of europe.

So far, our only access to the UK and European grids is via the Moyle Interconnector in Northern Ireland which connects to Scotland. This is a short DC interconnector that isn't exactly enormous and only accessable via the North-South interconnector between ESB and Northern Ireland Electricity 2 X 600 MW AC circuits and 2 smaller 120MW interconnectors that are really to provide back up in remote areas of the northwest.

Basically, for the most part, we rely almost entirely on our own generation capactity.

Most of Ireland's power stations are owned by ESB (the state owned PoCo) and both Irish and European competition legislation has prevented ESB from expanding these stations in recent years or from building new ones.

Our power consumption is growing extremely rapidly due to a rising population and ever increasing economic activity and small private power companies arn't able to build new capacity fast enough to meet demand.

The ESB on the otherhand, could simply expand or modenise existing plants to squeeze more capacity out of them without needing to get planning permissions, emissions licences etc etc or dealing with anti-pylon protestors who have held up connections to new generation stations in the past.

If we don't do something soon, we're going to be facing an actual power crisis in a few years time. Yet, no one seems to be taking it very seriously.

Just to give you an idea of growth in demand... Ireland has grown from 3.4 million to well over 4 million people in under 5 years. ESB networks had 90,000 new connections last year!

I heard today that the NZ Government is going to regulate Transpowers prices using the Commerce Commission. This will now mean two different government departments dictating to Transpower what they can and can't invest in by controlling how Transpower charges us to pay for their investments. Transpower can't install new lines if they can't afford it.

Meanwhile the generation industry is subject to little or no auditing at all !

Transpower will now have to hire extra lawyers to justify their investments to the Commerce Commission and the consumer will pay for that.

If a bunch of bean-counters at the Commerce Commission reckon they can make Transpower build up the grid capacity, and lower their consumer prices, without going bankrupt, then those beancounters will be worth every penny of their 6 figure salary. But I'm sceptical. I think blackouts are more likely.

In short, I think our bone-headed government has got it wrong again.

This story here from Stuff looks like we might be starting to head in the right direction for once.
Personally, I reckon that it's about time that everybody in this country woke up to where we are headed as far as our burgeoning power consumption is going.
Commercial buildings are often the worst users of electricity here, how many times have you gone into an office here and seen huge amounts of un-necessary lights burning away,when there would be adequate lighting without them on and the Air conditioning running way above or below what would be called a comfortable temperature?, the "Switch Off" campaign that we had during our last "power crisis" was all but forgotten less than a minute after the all-clear was given, now we are back to or have surpassed the former consumption levels.
On the other side of the coin, a few environmentalists here also need to realise that you can't run a factory that needs 300kWh a day to run properly, on solar panels.
Electricity distribution is a fact of life, if we don't start doing something now, we are going to be in real trouble in the not-too-distant future.
Depending upon enough rain to fill the Southern lakes every winter is just silly, if you consider the way that our climate here has changed over the short period of twenty years, it's not going to get any better in the foreseeable future either.

{Message edited for a grammatical error}



[This message has been edited by Trumpy (edited 12-23-2005).]

The solution is, Trumpy: Build a big fat nuclear power plant somewhere near Auckland and then cut the cook strait cable.

But seriously, NZ does need to upgrade the grid. Even the bean-counters must realize that blackouts in the capital means a "Banana Republic" credit rating.

Interestingly the STUFF article on wind-power didn't include Canterbury in the list of ideal sites for the generators. I would have thought the "Canterbury Nor'wester" was a prime candidate !

There are rumours floating around in the industry that something will be built around the Kaipara Harbour near Helensville.

But when ? who knows

Nuclear would be good but I don't see that happen with madam Clark at the helm.

Its probably gas fired with the so called 'frozen gas' to be imported from Aussie.

Access to the 110 and 220 kV pylons is a breeze because they are about 2 km's away from the Kaipara.

Rodalco, I think nuclear is the way to go too. Gas generation has its greenhouse emmission problem, which is a major, and nuclear only has the problem of where to put the spent fuel rods.

I'm not a fan of paying third world countries to store spent rods, nor the practise of storing them on ships that sail perpetually and never offload them.

Why can't we transport spent fuel rods out into space and dump them there ?

Maybe in the freezing vacuum of space, a nuclear rod won't last as long as it does down here.

Don't know if you guys heard the latest rumours on talkback and radio / TV news that Transpower want's to increase prices by 19% for this year and 15% for the following years.

You got to be joking.!!
Also the possibilty that Transpower may go back to government control, we are already overcharged and I'm sick and tired off all the excuses they come up with to rip us of for more money.

The last 10 years or so hardly any investment were made and hughe profits were taken away to overseas shareholders.

That's a thought that's occurred to me as well. I don't think the conditions would reduce the radioactive life of the material, but with such vast stretches of empty space, what better place to just leave the spent fuel for X thousand years to decay?

Arianne explodes on take off, carrying 10 tons of spent fuel-rods. Oh, bolleaux! Zere goes ze neyber'ood!

Alan