The owners of the National Grid here in NZ have been warned that should thier price increases next year exceed the pre-set threshold, that they could be subject to regulation.
Here's an article from Stuff.co.nz:
Warning for Transpower over price rise

It's been no secret here that the average consumer has been getting ripped off as far as prices go here, since the reforms bought in in 1992 were supposed to make power cheaper.
The CEO of Transpower "earns" NZ$4052 a day!.

Just like this side of the Tasman, I can't think of any 'reform' that has been to the consumer's benefit; on the other hand if you're a CEO...It really is quite obscene what some people get paid and I'd think after a short time you'd run out of things to spend your money on. How do they justify it?

Aussie,
On that sort of money, you should be renewing the National Grid all by yourself.
Us registered people here lost a lot of our power as Electricians, with respect to getting the PoCo Inspectors to sign our work off.
They had a better idea of the Regs, and they knew whose work was up to scratch and whose wasn't.
Same side of the coin, mate, PoCo's back then under the permit system knew exactly what was being connected to their lines, with respect to connected load.
We have no idea now, the idiot that caused this has more than anything caused us to drop the ball!.
Transformers are overheating or burning out fuses in some places in town here.
Thanks a lot Max Bradford!.
Self-Certification??.
Who are you trying to kid?
Considering that only 33% of Electricians here (if it is in fact that high) actually use the CoC's, shows that a LOT were let off with no limits to the damage that they can cause.


[This message has been edited by Trumpy (edited 11-28-2005).]

£300,000 a year is sweet Fanny Adams in the higher corporate echelons salary mart. If a CEO screws up, thousands of familes go on the dole. If he gets it right, there's money in the pot for better pay and conditions, expansion and dividends for the stockholders, (not forgetting that the bulk of capital is from small investors on limited incomes). The people who have the nous to steer huge corporations well are pretty thin on the ground, hence the high pay to get the right person.
It's a capitalist world, me dears, and if you knows of a better 'ole, go to it!!
As to spending it, no problemo!!

Alan

Don't get me wrong guys,
I'm not against companies making a dollar or two providing a service or goods, but to a degree here, it's been at the expense of the Network that provides the goods.
If an Electrician owns a van that they use for work, they wouldn't just not keep the maintainence up on the vehicle and run it into the ground.
You'd keep the thing clean and keep it running properly wouldn't you.
However, if that van became either too small or couldn't keep up with your current (or prospecive) needs, you'd get a better one wouldn't you?.
I realise this is a rather simplistic veiw of the problem, but it's what is currently happening.

Trumpy, you're right, Transpowers CEO isn't looking after his van properly. The Auckland CBD blackouts were proof of this.

We can only hope that the enormous salary lures a CEO to Transpower clever enough to soup up the old Van within budget.

Good call Kiwi,
But one thing has to be thought about here.
To a degree, it's not Transpowers fault when you get people like this
abating any chance of ever upgrading the Grid.
Most people here want a supply, but most don't realise that they are cutting thier own throats.
I say cut the DC Link at Benmore and let them argue it out up North.
While all the greenies up north stop the progress of Transpower, they are also stopping the upgrade of the lines down here.
We could survive here easily on the installed capacity down here.
North Island?, who are they?.

Yes Trumpy I read that story today. I thought that if the protesters under the pylon were all issued with hard-hats then the work should have continued

Regarding the state of the national grid:

An interesting point here is ; If the government still owned our national grid, would they have done it better ?

The 400 kV line to Auckland needs to be built soon.

In the local news rag there was an article for resource consent to increase the temperature of the Grid wires from 70°C to 120°C.
The reason for that is the extra sagging of the cables within allowable clearances. Imagine the powerlosses!!

Other option is to triple or quadruple the current carrying conductors , which is common in Europe, OK it adds extra weight, perhaps the cost of strengthening towers and insulators may not outweigh the benefits.

The power here in West Auckland has gone up from 8.26 Cts kWh to 14.87 cts kWh in about 10 years, thats nearly double!! Now you pay extra for cable faults to your property and or point of entry, used to be included. Linecharges up from 20cts to 63cts / day.
Also the electricity commision levy of 0.17 cts kWh an other rip off tax.

Just something to ponder about.
Time for a nice coffee now

Cheers

Ray, I know what you mean.
But, back when I was an Electrical Apprentice I got the old Blue book called the "Electrical Theory And Practice".
In that book, was a map of the Network as of the 1960's-70's, there were a lot of power stations in the North Island that were shut down, mainly because it was thought at the time that the South Island would provide all of the capacity and more to the North Island.
A lot of them power stations were coal or gas-fired plants, they have been dismantled and sold off as scrap.
Now, has'nt that come back and bit us in the backside?.
Ray, you might see a few of my posts here being down on people from the North Island, mainly Auckland, but I think everyone has a part to play here.
It seems to me however, that everyone wants bigger houses or to live on a lifestyle block here, but no-one wants pylons near thier place.
The people on the lifestyle blocks don't realise that thier power is brought via 11, 22 or 33kV lines.


[This message has been edited by Trumpy (edited 12-11-2005).]

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

Never mind the economics of putting about 10 tons of waste into space* useing 100 tons of rocket fuel...

*orbit. Outer space requires much more.

Whoops ! Never thought of those problems !

Lucky I'm not in charge eh ?

Hmmm..... O.K., the ratio of energy expended for the space shot versus the energy obtained from the fuel rods is something which hadn't occurred to me either.

Now if we could actually set up nuclear reactors in space and find some way to get the power back to earth, maybe it would be a more viable option?