The national electricity grid operator is warning of possible insufficient power generation to meet households’ demand on Friday.
Transpower has issued a notice saying there was a risk that power generation and reserves would not meet demand between 7.30am-8.30am.
It said if power generators could not provide enough electricity, Transpower would manage demand to avoid a grid emergency.
“The system operator may instruct the grid owner to disconnect feeders without further notice to connected parties,” it said.
Common enough; but I wonder if this is a symptom of new generation not keeping up with attempts to reduce emissions. Less coal/gas power generation & less wood-fired heating combining with a cold snap.
But the intent of a grid notice like that is to encourage generators to turn on more supply I think - its only a grid emergency notice that indicates supply isn’t meeting demand.
The other thing that’ll happen is where areas have ripple control they’ll turn off hot water & street lights & whatnot to reduce demand as well.
Yeah, I guess coal/gas power.still needed during the colder months.
Or storage for our more intermittent renewables such as wind & solar. Pumped Hydro would have been useful early this morning for instance (and is what lots of places in the rest of the world are doing).