John Harbord: Major Electricity Users' Group Chair on the need for firmer electricity sources

Concerns bad investment choices in electricity generation will keep our supply unreliable. 

Tiwai Point aluminium smelter is ramping up production reversing previous restrictions, to ease winter supply concerns. 

Meridian Energy says the hydro storage is looking much healthier this winter.  

Major Electricity Users' Group Chair John Harbord told Mike Hosking restrictions will likely be back in force next winter, without investment in firmer electricity supply like geothermal and hydro plants. 

He says solar panels only generate electricity 25% of the time and wind turbines only create energy 40% of the time. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now it turns out it rained a bit, so the
panic over winter and the power supply might have abated.
Our hydro supplies are healthier than first thought Meridian, and
our confidence in our capacity, which means, as I mentioned
earlier in the program, that t Y can get back
to making aluminium at full pace. John Harvard is the
Major Electricity Users Group chair and as well as John,
morning to you, good morning this whole You can make

(00:22):
some aluminium, but not as much as you want. Thing
is very third world, isn't it. When are we getting
over this?

Speaker 2 (00:29):
Well? The short answered Mike is we're not in the
short term. So already the long term forecast for next
year is not looking great for next winter, and part
of it is we're just completely reliant on the weather
because we haven't sorted out what we call firm supplier
of electricity, which is historically being performed by gas currently coal,

(00:50):
and we need more generation in that space that actually
ensures that we've got electricity twenty four to seven rather
than being overly reliant on highly intermittent renewables like so
Solar electricity, for instance, generates electricity about twenty to twenty
five percent of the time. Wind generates about forty percent
of the time, and that's the generation people are building

(01:13):
at the moment. What we need them to be building
is much what we call firmer supply. We need more
development into hydrogeneration, into geothermal generation, but it's just not happening.

Speaker 1 (01:24):
No, exactly. Every time I talk to a power company,
they reassure me that eventually in time will have so
much choice that we can't fail. Is that true or not.

Speaker 2 (01:34):
No, well, it's true to the extent that you trust
that they will overbuild so much that will have a
surplus of supply. Historically, what's happened is we've built as
much as we need at that moment, but we don't
get ahead of it, so prices don't come down. So
we fundamentally have an affordability crisis in the country at
the moment. So the Northern Infrastructure Forum, Orking Chamber of

(01:57):
COMMISS released the survey last week showed that one in
four businesses has cut their production because of high electricity
PRICESCT even worse, one in four businesses has had to
sack someone or let them go because of high electricity prices.
So there's no way as a country we get good
economic growth. There's no way we get to double our
exports until we tackle this affordability crisis.

Speaker 1 (02:20):
All right, good and so I appreciate it very much.
Labour and the Greens will tell you this is all good.
Of course we want more. Where this came from John Harbord,
who's the Major Electricity Users Group chair. For more from
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