If New Zealanders are asked over the next few years to reduce power use or face blackouts, the responsibility will fall squarely on Energy Minister Gerry Brownlee. Just days before Christmas, while everyone was distracted by other things, he announced that the Whirinaki power plant will be sold and the reserve energy scheme put in place by the previous government will be abolished.
In other words, if we have a dry winter and the hydro lake levels fall too low, there won’t be a back up generator. Brownlee is placing his blind faith in the market, just as Max Bradford did before him. The market failed to deliver in the past, there is no reason to think it will behave any differently in the future.
An effectively functioning market will match supply and demand as closely as possible. That works OK when everything is operating normally, but it doesn’t leave much in the way of a ‘reserve’ should unforseen events happen, such as a dry winter. It wouldn’t make economic sense, what commercial operator looking for a profit would invest in a reserve generator that would only be needed in exceptional circumstances? That’s why the last government put a back-up system in place.
The announcement that the Whirinaki plant will be sold also amounts to another broken promise from the National government. Before the election they promised Kiwis they wouldn’t sell any state assets during their first term, yet now they’re putting a multi-million dollar power plant on the auction block.
National’s decision to sell Whirinaki and abolish the reserve energy scheme is short-sighted and foolish. It’s ordinary kiwis who will pay the price if things go wrong. If we have a dry winter and electricity generation can’t meet demand, prices will sky rocket.
This kind of rationale doesn’t apply to this government – ‘ordinary kiwis’ are simply not Gerry’s (or John Key’s) constituency
Depends when the lights go out – during your parties dictatorship, the Greenies prevented some power generations schemes progressing. (Waitaki River) Those same schemes would now be coming on line. Power generation takes many years to design get consents, build. I think we can hardly blame the nats for your parties 9 years of in action.
Try again Chris.
{Monty, the tone and rhetoric of your comments in the last couple of days has been really shrill. We readily accept alternate points of view here, but we really want to avoid it just becoming a slanging match. Please think about that with your comments, Grant}
“he announced that the Whirinaki power plant will be sold and the reserve energy scheme put in place by the previous government will be abolished.”
What reasons were given for these two actions?
Maybe they intend to pass regulations requiring landlords to insulate their properties, so that power conservation will improve … . That makes sense, but then so does a CGT and private propoerty landlords don’t want that either.
So will National do what is required, or is this just of an agenda to revalue existing power generation assets upward before a look at offloading some shares in ownership of them to those who received most of the tax cut money. So of course those who win the share auction can then offload them onto the market for a nice little untaxed capital gain.
Maybe if Chris told the whole story instead of cherry picking parts that suits his political agenda then the debate would be a bit more balanced from the outset.
1. Contact is the current owner
2. Meridian do not want the plant
3. The plant needs to remain in situ and must remain operational for three years
this from the press release
The plant will be tendered subject to the following conditions:
• it may only be relocated during the summer of 2011/12 or 2012/13. This is to ensure the plant will continue to be available under the reserve energy scheme until the end of 2011, and that it remains available to assist with winter load in subsequent years;
• and the plant must remain in an operating condition in New Zealand for at least three years after sale – this allows time for the various measures the government is putting in place to improve security of supply (such as making it costly for generator-retailers to rely on conservation campaigns) to take effect.
as I said – try harder next time Chris – and maybe start by disclosing the full facts.
As of Feb 2010 NZ had a wind power capacity of 497 MW. These would have almost all happened under Labours multiparty government.
Meanwhile the new High tension line from Whakamaru to Auckland is under construction despite being bitterly contested by National in opposition.
With the Whirinaki sale , which breaks an election promise, National has shown its ‘relaxed’ about security of supply and the threat of the lights going out.
You are on dangerous ground here Chris with Labours record. We need a nice big nucleur plant in the NI, one of those nice ones they are building in UAE which produces no waste and no greenhouse gases, a light water reactor.
David, nuclear plants will NEVER be on the agenda in NZ and not because of any nuclear free policy. Have a quick peek at the start up and running costs for a single plant and tell me, who will pay for this? Nuclear power is a red herring until it is affordable for a country our size
SO tell me after they sell this power plant to whoever bought it gonna go up to where they bought it from and get in the mechanics to dismantle it and chuck it on trucks and then ships, then pull it all off build a dam then rebuild it there??? or will they run it here and charge us heaps for the emergency power we’re gonna need.
@David, please provide us with more information about the “no waste” nuclear power plant you propose.
Nuclear fission power generation is inefficient and creates nuclear waste. People always think of the USA when nuclear power is mentioned but the USA only gets about 20% of all their electricity from nuclear power stations. The USA generate over 50% of their power from coal.
New Zealand has about 500 years worth of high grade coal, some of the best coal on Earth. The electricity sector in New Zealand uses mainly renewable energy sources such as hydropower, geothermal power and increasingly wind energy. The 70% share of renewable energy sources makes New Zealand one of the lowest carbon emitting countries in terms of electricity generation.
I say we burn coal. I’m sure that there are people that say we shouldn’t burn coal but I’ll bet you a pound to a pinch of poop that those people who disagree with me aren’t on the breadline, disabled, old or just generally impoverished. The cost of power is doing serious harm to the people on the bottom rung of this country and Labour seem oblivious to this fact.
Wake up Chris. Start developing some serious policy on how to get the power back into the people’s hands rather than this tired and reactionary “Blame Gerry” horse shit.
am I in moderation? keeps saying my comment needs moderation? what gives?
[Not sure what triggered the moderation, but comment was fine - Chris]
Richard for No waste Nuclear power (well as close to no waste as possible) then you would have to use Nuclear Fusion rather than Nuclear Fission. And thats a whole nother ball game.
http://www.diffen.com/difference/Nuclear_Fission_vs_Nuclear_Fusion
True tracey we still have the lack of capital.
This is outrageous. I only have one question which I know, to my frustration, Labour will never answer – would Labour make it a policy to buy the plant back and therefore have any justification for saying this is wrong. The difference between criticism and whining is having a counter proposal/solution.
Well I mean, constructive* criticism
It would also be permissible to come up with an alternative plan for backup generation; gives more options than just buying the plant back.
And this situation only came about because GB stuck his noes in trying to create a “competitive” market where there isn’t one as power happens to be a natural monopoly (we really do need to renationalise and reintegrate it so that it can be managed rationally).
If it remains as a backup plant then I’d be surprised that if it made three years before the private owners declared themselves bankrupt and walked away. A backup plant is not commercially viable.
About 40 years ago NZ’s national power plan included the option for 4 x 250MWe nuclear plants
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf97.html
They were canned when the Maui gas-field and Huntly coal reserves were discovered. However, I don’t think we can categorically state that nuclear will never be on the table again for NZ.
I hope this post doesn’t provide a mandate for people who don’t pay their power bills to blame Gerry Brownlee.
However, I don’t think we can categorically state that nuclear will never be on the table again for NZ.
I think its inevitable we’ll have nuclear power one day. The fact that it’s endlessly renewable is it’s big selling point, the waste, it’s major detractor. If an extremely fast and efficient way to dispose of waste without dumping it in the ocean or underground is discovered, I would have no personal problem with a few nuclear power plants in the country.
The problem with the green lobby is that they constantly call for renewable clean energy, but then oppose things like dams and windfarms because they ruin the scenery. At the same time they dislike coal and nuclear for whichever reason.
It’s almost like they want only solar panels on every roof in the country, which I know little about, but I can’t imagine it being too efficient, but I could be wrong. If the green lobby wants to be taken seriously, I think they should stop being crusaders and start talking to people on their base instinctual levels; i.e. if you INVEST in solar panels on you house, you can SAVE a lot of MONEY. People don’t like being yelled and screamed at about killing the planet when all they’re trying to do is feed their families.
Jimmy Carter put solar panels in the whitehouse and when Reagen took the presidency he ripped them all out. What the hell does that say about the right that they are against certain kinds of energy production exactly because their renewable, I mean if their already put in there why rip them out it’s not gonna cost you money anymore only save it, it’s ridiculous
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-05/solar-panels-on-white-house-roof-removed-by-reagan-to-return-under-obama.html there on the third paragraph but I’m sure theres more about it on other places on the net
Smallest you can get now is 1GWe which brings it’s own problems (ie, it’s too big). Throw in the fact that they’re damned expensive to build and more expensive to decommission and leaves you with an large unusable section of land at the end of it and, well, nuclear isn’t going far.
http://www.facepalm.com/page/Ascii-Facepalms.aspx
Uranium and other fissionables are subject to peak resource just the same way that oil is.
@ Chris Hipkins
Didn’t your mate James Caygil’s Dad sell Telecom?
and your angry about this? Jeez
I’d say that there are many off the shelf designs available of the latest reactor models but scaled down to be smaller. But yes, most new modern operational reactors planned seemed to be of the 1GWe to 1.4GWe range.
NB China’s high safety new pebblebed reactor design started out with a 10MWe prototype, which they are now scaling up to 250MWe developments.
Yes – although I read a news report recently which said that China had developed new reprocessing technologies which increased the expected lifespan of their nuclear fuel reserves by many times (to over 1000 years of fuel reserves, probably a generous overestimation in itself).
“The current theoretical overnight cost of constructing a nuclear power plant is about 2 to 2.5 billion dollars for a plant with two conventional reactors and generating about two gigawatts – a nominally sized plant. This compares favorably with fossil fuel plant. Westinghouse has estimated the cost of four power plants, each containing two AP1000 reactors and generating more than 2 gigawatts each to be about 8 billion US dollars. General Electric has stated that their new ESBWR design could reduce costs to below $1000 per kilowatt of installed capacity.
However, in practice the costs can be substantially more. ”
US Dollars
In contrast, Manapouri, our largest hydrodam, generates 0.73 gigawatts.
A 2GW nuclear installation ~= 3 Manapouri’s or 1.5 Huntleys.
The new combined cycle gas generation upgrade at Huntly (2007) came in at NZ$1350 per kW of installed capacity.
But even modern safer nuclear reactor designs have the same old problem – what do you do with spent radioactive fuel.
Of course you’ll no doubt be able to provide links to back up your claim about the green lobby, but it’s worth noting that the continued and well publicised use of renewable energy provides much more to this country than mere greened up electricity.
As for dams, they can be majorly destructive to the natural environment depending on where the money men wish to site them, and I think the case against some sites is much more than nimbyism.
I love wind farms as a source of cheap energy. I have no problem with them, unlike the usually wealthy countrysiders who complain about spoilt views.
I’d rather see rows of easily removoble windmills than a power station or indeed, a nuke plant that won’t have it’s decomissioning factored into it’s build cost, and one that has byproducts that have toxic half lives of many thousands of years.
Nuke power is the tory in the electrical generation game. All potential costs savings and glossy brochures, yet minus the forethought to see the damage it will be doing to the people.
It will never happen in NZ.
Wonder why NZ has not got into tidal generation. We have a lot of coastline per capita. Heaps.
Since when was Anton Oliver a member of the Green Lobby??? Well, well, well…