For example, you’ve previously insisted (without providing a shred of evidence to back it up) that there has been 160MW per year of new capacity built since 1990. My post to which DPF links clearly shows you to have been lying about that new capacity (there was on average only 125MW per year) , and dissembling about the number of plants decommissioned (of a capacity of 949.5 MW) — which when taken into account gives a derisory per-year new capacity figure of just 21 MW.

That’s as pathetic as your claim, which seems to rest on the assumption that readers won’t check your numbers.

And now you make another inflated claim, here at Kiwiblog. You say that “1300MW of generation has been built since 2000. That’s a cold hard fact.”

If it’s a cold, hard fact, then you can tell me quite easily what is missing in the following list:

POWER STATIONS COMISSIONED 2000-2008:
Otahuhu B, gas, 2000, (380 MW)
Huntly, gas, 2004, (50 MW)
Huntly co-generation, 2007, (250 MW)
Whirinaki ‘b’, deisel, 2004, (155 MW)
Tararua, wind, 2004, (50 MW)
Te Rere Heu, wind, 2006, (2.5 W)
Tuaropaki, geothermal, 2000, (56 MW)
Mokai, geothermal, 2000, (52 MW)
TOTAL COMMISSIONED 2000-2008: (995.5 MW)

And if it’s “cold, hard facts” that you’re peddling, why don’t you mention the generators that have been taken out of production in that period:

POWER STATIONS DECOMISSIONED 2000-2008:
New Plymouth, 2007 (580 MW)
Otahuhu A, 2002 (90 MW)
Whirinaki ‘a’, 2002 (216 MW)

TOTAL DECOMISSIONED 2000-2008: (886 MW)

Did you just forget to mention these, just as you had in your earlier claim referenced above?

If you’d forgotten once, it might conceivably just be carelessness. To have “forgotten” twice, however, looks rather like something else, doesn’t it.

re fast tracking, the govt has chosen to ‘call in’ certain complex projects of national significance that are likely to go to appeal anyway – Te Mihi geothermal and Te Uku or waka are two. Transpower’s 170km line into Auckland is another.

This means a whole level of process is removed. Normally you go to the local council then people appeal to the Envir Court. Calling in makes it a one step process. The small HB windfarm was supposedly such a project, whcih, if true, tells me we are really in the crapper. Weirdly it denied a similar request for a similar sized farm. Go figure…

Virtual

Re WHirinaki location, I think that was an MED decision because Pete Hodgson promised a quick solution. It was an already consented site. I don’t think the EC had anything to do with it. They just fund it. MED is the asset owner.

I regard it as every free citizens duty to take every step to ward off the greedy rapacious waste of oxygen that passes for Socialist politicans and their lackeys

In other words, the cost of 10% over-capacity is way less than the cost of 10% under-capacity.

But the cost of 10% over-capacity is borne by the generator while the cost of 10% under-capacity is borne by NZ Inc.

So rationally enough the generators will always prefer to carry less surplus capacity than the country might prefer. Not sure how we can best go about fixing that. The Electricity Commission maintains the peak reserve at Whirinaki for roughly these reasons. But they enter it into the market on pricing grounds rather than system security.

And in a classical piece of bureaucratic decision-making they put the reserve generation in the Hawkes Bay rather than in the South Island. Our electricity system is vulnerable to shortages of rain. When that happens the true electricity shortage is in the South Island, not in the Hawkes Bay. It’s bloody inefficient to pipe gas from Taranaki to Hawkes Bay, and to transmit electricity from the North Island down to the South Island. The right approach would have been to have the reserve generation in the South Island. The Electricity Commission had submissions to do just that but ignored them. Twerps.

With Maui winding down two things are happening. First, the new replacement fields have a shorter operating life than the operating life of a generation plant … so you could build a new gas-fired power station that would run for 25 years but potentially run out of gas after 15 years. Kind of f&$ks the economics. Second, the new contracts are aggressive monthly take-or-pays, so you have to be confident that you can run the new plant full-bore all year, which doesn’t necessarily fit the generator’s portfolios. You’ll see Contact has recently bought some old rundown gas fields for just this reason, any surplus gas they have to take will be stored in the old fields until Contact need it. But that extra cost doesn’t help the economics either.

We are about to slide balls and all in to a recession, and he say’s THAT!

No bloody idea how an economy works, none of them!

The electricity market is doing exactly what any market does … it’s generating clear pricing signals. Markets are efficient ways to signal the relative balance of supply & demand. But that’s about all, they’re not some magic bullet for resolving the worlds problems.

The regulatory breakdown is largely due to the RMA, but it’s also heavily due to the ongoing uncertainty about carbon taxes and the ETS and Parker-the-halfwit’s “ban” on new thermal generation. How can a generator currently determine the relative economics of a windfarm, a hydro plant or a thermal plant? And if they can’t do that how can they sensibly justify billion dollar-ish capital investments that have a 25-50 year life? Not surprisingly they’re shying away from the large investment decisions.

What’s saving us as a country is the over-building of generation capacity in the 1960s & 1970s. The old Electricity Department built far more generating capacity than we actually needed (mainly in order to keep a cadre of engineers busy rather than because all of the plants were needed) and over the last 10 years or so we’ve slowly been eating up that over-capacity.

The real crunch is going to come in 3-4 years from now. Even if a slate of new generating plants were approved today it’d take 3-4 years before they come on line. In the meantime we have to somehow deal with the ongoing increases in demand with today’s portfolio of plants. So for the next few years it’s only going to worse, not better.

Someone above touched on another valid point, that there are some very minor self-interested parties such as kayakers, who fight such things. Thomas Sowell has pointed out in his excellent columns again and again, that “Green” laws and restrictions over the environment, is actually one of the most extreme forms of elitism, maintaining landscapes and leisure for the sake of the pleasure level in the lives of a small minority of well-off people, while hurting the great majority of less-well-off people who are struggling to get a life at all in the first place.

You sit there all day with your recuiting company employer paying you to obsessivly troll DPF’s and by your own admission other peoples sites.

Jock to English translation for you Frank, we call that DIShonest work.

Here’s a little word puzzle since your employer is so cool with you taking his money without actually doing 3/8 of fuck all – rearrange to suit.

grip a get

I know nothing about Te Uku but surely this project was always going to have to go through a consent hearing process because of what and where it was as well as its novelty? It’s hard to imagine it would be non notified.

A counterpoint to your example was a judge at the Lake Hayes windfarm hearing who told the applicants not to cross examine an opposing expert landscape architect witness because it was a waste of time as his evidence was tainted. He openly said the witnesses testimony was valuless because it wasn;t independent. So don’t assume everyone is stupid and that rebuffing such a witness would be time consuming and expensive.

Although there was more than one objection received in the submission process, one stands out. A so called wind expert objected to the project going ahead. His submission attempted to argue this small windfarm would have detrimental effects on the weather patterns of the whole North Island essentially making a permanent change. Now I am no weather expert but this submission is absurd as everyone realises. 22 wind turbines will apparently change the weather patterns pemantley over half the country. What the….?

However due to the RMA the commisioner has to consider this idiots argument. The Energy company then has to pay for experts to rebut the argument at further expense and delay to the project.

Six months after he has raised his argument the consent process rumbles on. He has partially achieved his goal of at the least delaying this project, while the rest of us turn the heaters off to avoid black outs.

The RMA must be a priority for the next government.

I never said that, but presenting falsities as fact doesn’t actually help argue a case, no matter how affirmatively you state it

I’m also sure that you agree with every law in NZ, given how clear you are that the RMA is the law so nothing to complain about. You’re also happy with the EFA, and the limits on the EPMU campaigning?

My personal view – not enough new capacity, and the RMA needs some fine tuning to make it possible to get the good projects through, without removing all ability to submit on the projects that have real impacts or problems. The RMA makes it too expensive and complex, I’m certain it is possible to streamline the process without losing much.