Code amendment: system operator and other market operations service providers
We have published decisions and reasons paper for the Electricity Industry Participation Code 2010 (Code) amendments relating to the services of the system operator and other market operations service providers. The amendment aligns the way services are provided with the Authority’s statutory objective. A summary of the submissions made in response to consultation on this topic has also been published.
In October 2015, we decided to amend the Code to prevent payments being made to generators for either in-band constrained on compensation or in-band constrained off compensation, while providing frequency keeping. The Code amendment promotes the efficiency limb of our statutory objective by increasing the probability that the most efficient providers of frequency keeping are selected in each trading period.
The Code amendment comes into force on 1 May 2016 and further details are available on our website.
Statistics on 2015 residential consumption released on EMI (now also includes statistical distributions)
We collect information on residential consumption to inform our monitoring activities, Code development and market facilitation measures. We have updated two existing reports on the EMI website with residential consumption statistics for 2015. The reports provide access to residential consumption figures from 2010 to 2015 at a monthly time resolution and broken down by various region types. This year we have added a dashboard and augmented the chart report to allow users to explore the distribution of consumption within each region, and compare this to other regions.
Without accounting for temperature effects, 2015 shows some small changes from 2014. Notable observations are:
Total residential consumption increased by 1.4 per cent, driven largely by more residential connections in the main centres.
Average annual consumption saw little change, increasing by just 0.3 per cent nationally. Consumers in Marlborough had the largest reduction in annual average consumption (down 1.7 per cent) while consumers in the Hawke’s Bay had the largest increase (up 1.3 per cent).
Canterbury consumers remain the highest users when measured by average annual consumption, and West Coast consumers remain the lowest.
You can explore residential consumption further in these EMI dashboards and reports:
We have published a report that outlines progress against the projects in our 2015/16 work programme. The report covers the period 1 July to 29 February 2016 and is available on our website.
Retail Advisory Group papers and Wholesale Advisory Group papers published
We have published papers from the 15 March 2016 meetings of the Retail Advisory Group (RAG) and Wholesale Advisory Group (WAG).
The RAG and WAG met together to discuss the Authority’s 2016/17 work programme, the changing characteristics of the New Zealand power system, and the potential for operational efficiency improvements in the New Zealand power system. After the combined meeting, the groups convened separately.
The RAG went on to discuss issues relating to the appropriate scope of the Authority’s regulatory activities regarding secondary networks, if broader definitions of distributor and retailer were adopted in the Electricity Industry Act 2010. The WAG went on to discuss the wholesale market information: review of disclosure exclusions project, and the review of instantaneous reserve event charge and cost allocation project.
Every participant who submitted hedge information in the previous year (1 April 2015 – 31 March 2016) must submit a declaration certificate to the Authority by Thursday, 30 June 2016. The requirements for these certificates are contained in clause 13.230 of the Code.
Please submit the declaration certificate on company letterhead using the Hedge Disclosure Declaration form to marketoperations@ea.govt.nz.
