News: Blog

There were 8 contracts traded that were eligible to include in the index calculations this month, but the last of these was on the 6th April, and since then nothing has traded in the OTC market (or at least not that meets the index criteria for size and duration).

 This blog post follows on from Hedging Fundamentals Part 1 and answers "Why are spot prices in the NZ wholesale electricity market so volatile?"

There were no FPVV contracts traded over the last month, so the FPVV index goes sideways this month, i.e. it defaults to last month's value of 10.2 c/kWh. Strong CFD growth has brought the main index up to 12 c/kWh. 

If you have some small-scale generation, how do you sell its generation output? This post briefly describes some common scenarios.

We now know that the Tiwai smelter is likely to be around for another four years to December 2024; but prior to 14th January we didn’t know this. What do futures prices tell us about futures traders’ views of the probability of Tiwai staying longer than August 2021?

The FPVV sub-index went up this month, but the CFD sub-index went down. The net result was the main index more-or-less went sideways, increasing by just over 1% to 8.9 c/kWh.

Rio Tinto, the majority owner of the Tiwai Pt aluminium smelter, announced last Thursday, 9th July, that it has terminated its electricity contract with Meridian Energy and that it will close the smelter by August 2021.  The announcement is short on details, and many questions remain unanswered.

Energy Link is working as normal, from home, during the Alert Level 4 lock-down, while we all get the virus under control.  Contact us as normal, via email landline or mobile.  That’s really all you need to know, but more details are in the blog.

The gas market is opaque relative to the electricity market, but recent major gas field outages have prompted moves to improve transparency.  One of the first improvements is an initiative by the gas industry regulator, the Gas Industry Company, which

This is the third in a series of three posts on what I see as the most important issues for the electricity market for the 2020s and beyond.  The first issue was woeful lack of disclosure in the gas market, and the second issue was the ineffectiveness of the electricity hedge market.  This third and final issue is on the challenge of moving toward extremely high level

This is the second in a series of three posts on what I see as the most important issues for the electricity market for the 2020s.  The first issue was disclosure in the gas market, which has as much impact on electricity as it has on gas, and is woefully inadequate.  The second issue, and the topic of this post, is the electricity hedge market:  how it is not working for new retail

We’ve been asked many times recently why spot prices are so high, so this has prompted me to finally put fingers to keyboard for another blog.  The spot prices are a function of low hydro storage, restricted fuel supplies, and plant outages.

It’s ironic that this month’s announcement that there will be no new offshore oil and gas exploration permits issued in New Zealand was titled “Planning for the future…”. This announcement was totally out of the blue and if there is a “plan” somewhere, it appears that no one outside of government knows what it is.

I’ve given talks recently at the Energy Trader Forum in Wellington and at the Otago Energy Research Centre’s annual symposium in Dunedin, including an overview of how recent upgrades on the HVDC link have changed the cost of transmission between the islands.

Inflows into the South Island’s major hydro lakes since February rank as the lowest on record, by quite a margin.

I was privileged to speak at the Energy Management Association of NZ (EMANZ) annual conference in Wellington last week and showed how market reforms over the last two decades, and now the Internet, are working together to disrupt the retail electricity market.

The charges for delivery of electricity (a.k.a. lines charges) include the cost of providing local networks and the transmission grid, and are published by local network companies, typically from 1 April for the year ahead. Now that the dust has settled from the most recent round of price adjustments, let’s take a look at what’s happening to line charges in major centres around the country.

Our Price Path is a forecast of electricity spot prices at over 200 nodes on the national grid. The latest version was released last week and covers the period from April 2018 to March 2033.

What drives electricity prices? Demand? Fuel costs? Losses? Transmission constraints? Carbon costs? The cost of new generation? Inflows? Well they all have an impact to a certain degree. The time frames vary but the answer in the long run is surprising, especially given that we are currently running at over 80% renewable generation.