News: Blog

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.

Over the last 20 years, spot prices in the electricity market were highly volatile. But 2016 will be remembered as one of the least volatile years on record.

Last Thursday 17th November our new Energy Exchange web site ran New Zealand’s first live internet reverse auction for electricity supply for the Southern Hemisphere Proving Ground, attracting bids from six retailers. By Greg Sise, Managing Director

Our courses are widely recognised as the most comprehensive in their subject areas.  For 2017 we are running three sets of public courses, all in Wellington.  We are also available to run these courses or customised courses in-house. 

This is the third and final post in a series which draws on research undertaken in collaboration with the Department of Accountancy and Finance at the University of Otago.  In the first post, we looked at evidence for premia in electricity futures prices.  In the second post we found some surprising drivers of premia observed in futures prices.  In this post we look at liquidity in the futures market, how it has evolved, and what developments or events caused it to change.