by Jeanette Fitzsimons
The Government’s moves to make the power retail market more competitive are good, if the reforms deliver, but they overlook the elephant in the room when it comes to making sustainable long-term savings on household power bills — energy conservation.
Make no mistake; tinkering with the retail situation will do nothing to alter the underlying fundamentals of energy supply and demand in New Zealand. Households will continue to face power price rises well beyond the rate of inflation until we invest significantly in energy conservation measures and incentivise distributed, renewable energy supplies.
For example, for the $15 million this Government plans to spend on advertising to raise awareness of switching power companies, you could fund another Green solar water heating programme that would add a further 15,000 solar water heaters to homes saving householders significant amounts on their power bills.
Another better way to spend $15 million would be to invest in the roll out of smart meters in people’s homes. Smart meters have been shown to reduce power bills by 5-15% purely through increasing householders’ awareness of their power usage. But it doesn’t end there. Smart meters can also work in tune with smart appliances turning them on and off at opportune times to make the best use of cheaper power throughout the day. Further savings.
The Parliamentary Commissioner has today come out in favour of one smart meter technology ideal for New Zealand’s needs — the ZigBee module. More on that can be found here.
The Greens are right behind the Commissioner’s belief that smart meters are one of the best ways to reduce demand and save consumers money. In line with this commitment, I’ve drafted a Member’s Bill to set minimum standards for smart meters as they’re rolled out.
Published in Economy, Work, & Welfare | Environment & Resource Management | THE ISSUES by Jeanette Fitzsimons on Thu, December 10th, 2009
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on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
This is absolutely appalling move, as it removes the consumer ability to send economic signals by showing market choice for renewable generation.
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I think the most cost effective method of generating home energy needs is to find a manufacturer in Asia who’s prepared to make very low cost solar panels & wind turbine’s that can be easily & very cheaply fitted (including very simple to follow diy video & written instructions) to any building.
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I think it is a shame that the Greens have not made it plain that the so-called market reforms of the electricity system have a been a disaster, as many predicted. As far as I’m concerned, this shuffling around of resources is not going to make one iota of difference, and indeed its bizarreness only goes to prove how ramshackle and idiotic the thinking is about this so-called market, and Jeanette is not making this point anything like strongly enough. A naive acceptance of neo-liberal economic dogma is bad enough in National and Labour, it certainly shouldn’t be part of the Green economic philosophy, and Jeanette’s wishful thinking about this matter is not appropriate, I would contend.
There is only one solution to this problem. Electricity is going to be the primary energy source for almost every facet of our lives including, before too long, transport. It is too important a strategic element of our economy to allow these shenanigans to continue. The present government owned companies, Meridian, Genesis etc need to be reincorporated into one government owned entity, including Transpower. This will leave two private companies in competition. The government should reduce power prices unilaterally so as to make the profitability of these companies less. When the share prices reach a more reasonable value, say $4.00 for Contact, the government should offer to buy them back, if their owners refuse, the government should continue to ensure low electricity prices until the price reduces further. I have no ethical qualms about this whatsoever, shareholders have done well in the present arrangement, with Contacts share price nearly quadrupling in just eight years, and we know, that along with a compliant and cynical Labour government, these companies have conspired to rort consumers out of over $4 billion. The Greens should not be kowtowing to this nonsense, and should make it plain that the market reform experiment as failed, as we knew it would, and we will look to other ways to produce renewable power resources and foster energy efficiency.
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Jock
I agree whole heartedly with you
I would like reasonably priced power up to a certain level and then a carbon tax which increases the more you use.
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Taking away Meridian’s ability to optimise the generation on the Waitaki is just crazy. Their existing management of that asset is working fine – don’t break it!
I also believe that moving at least one of the three 55MW generators from Whirinaki to a site with better access to the grid and access to natural gas (so it doesn’t have to run on diesel fuel) would make more sense – perhaps by the oil refinery. One of the existing constraints is that Whirinaki can use up all its diesel fuel on and off site before any additional fuel that is ordered can arrive.
Trevor.
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The Parliamentary Commissioner seems to have got it right. Full marks to her.
Trevor.
PS: Zigbee is a protocol, not a module.
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As usual Jeanette, your words are greenest of all the Green spokespeople. Smart meters are the ay to go.
You should think about being leader sometime!
Can someone remind me of the structure of the system prior to Max Bradford’s reforms and what was the reasoning behind his tipping it upside down?
I have fond memories of a system that appeared to be pretty damned good from a personal perspective. Was there general dissatisfaction then?
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The first major reform of the electricity industry was the splitting off of the distribution network, and the creation of lines companies. We were told this was the democratisation of these assets, as the shares would be distributed to electricity consumers, and that way we would actually OWN these wonderful assets but in a different and presumably more valuable way than how we actually owned them previously. This was the ineffable “property owning democracy” so beloved of the Friedmanites and so effectively espoused by Margaret Thatcher, when she did the same thing with so many of the UK’s assets, including the very homes people lived in.
This was the true magic of practice of neo-liberalism, it’s truly astounding ability to persuade otherwise intelligent people that these economic slights of hand actually had some economic merit, rather than being the cheap conjuring tricks of economic quacks and shysters, which was of course their true nature.
The result was entirely predictable (except of course a naive and compliant media and public hadn’t got a clue what was hitting them, Roger Douglas being well trained in the art of Chicago School economics and the “shock doctrine”, nor did he make any secret of this) being that the vast majority of people, getting a one-off financial asset of around $700, sold their shares to rapacious investment firms. I can well recall shopping in Pollen St in Thames at this time, and representatives of these financial leeches approaching us in the street, soliciting would be the word, offering to buy our shares at $12.00 per share, when the companies had been valued at $4.00 per share, so no wonder people sold their shares. It was a national scandal which New Zealanders took in their usual political position, one of complete prostration. I didn’t sell my shares, but a few years down the track the company that my shares represented was fully taken over by another company, and my shares were compulsorily sold on my behalf, and I had to apply to get my money from some place in Auckland, they couldn’t even be bothered to send me a cheque for this amount. I suspect there are still thousands of unclaimed accounts even now. So much for the “property owning democracy”.
And what for? Remember we had just about the cheapest electricity supply of any nation in the OECD, almost entirely paid for by our predecessors – there were no outstanding debts, the industry functioned well, there were no massive expenditures that needed private finance, why bother with private finance when the electricity industry was self-funding and governments can borrow money, if they need to, at lower rates than private companies. There was an efficient and low cost government department and management that ran the whole industry from the rain to plug, and who’s one CEO earned around $300,000. It doesn’t need labouring by me as to how favourably all this compares with the situation as now pertains.
And that is why it is so disappointing to me that the Greens are not much more vociferous about the folly of the electricity reforms; of all the destructive follies of the neo-liberal economic reforms, the electricity industry in New Zealand (and many other countries) is the prime and most accessible example, and no doubt will be used by future generations as teaching material in schools and universities, and they can laugh at our culpability and criminal naivety.
I hope this brings some enlightenment.
Best wishes,
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Jock, for a moron, you are surprisingly literate!
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There is one small detail about using wireless modules (e.g. using Zigbee) and that is that the meter box is not actually the best place for them. In most houses, the meter box is near one corner, often just a few feet from the property boundary. This means that an air condition unit on one property may be nearer the neighbour’s meter box than the meter box on that property. Which one will it listen to? It won’t matter if they are transmitting the same data but if the two sites are on different tarrifs with different timing…
Trevor.
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