Decision to implement Options B and D
April 2023
The Electricity Authority has decided to implement Options B and D. This follows further design work and estimation of delivery timeframes by the system operator and the wholesale information trading system (WITS) provider, indicating these options can be implemented in May 2023. The assessment of these options against the Electricity Authority’s statutory objective described in our decision paper remains valid following this further development.
Decision to implement Option B
Following the Electricity Authority’s decision to further progress this option, the Electricity Authority has worked with the system operator and the WITS provider to confirm design details that best achieve the intended benefits whilst being sufficiently practicable for implementation by winter 2023.
The confirmed design details include:
- The solution will involve four sensitivities to forecast market schedules published on WITS. These sensitivities would represent increases and decreases in forecast demand and wind generation and published results would include prices as well as residual generation for each sensitivity case.
- To help ensure it can be implemented for winter 2023, the quantum of these increases and decreases will be static, representing statistical confidence limits during peak periods, rather than dynamic values representing a forecast of uncertainty.
- The sensitivity schedules will be run in an offline environment which will not have the same reliability and support as the live market system but will be adequate for the short duration the schedules will be live for.
Given these design details, the system operator and WITS manager have provided an estimate of the time required to implement this solution indicating implementation in May 2023.
Based on the work to progress Option B summarised above, the assessment in the decision paper of this option against the Electricity Authority’s statutory objective remains valid and we are confident this option is implementable by winter 2023.
Decision to implement Option D
Following the decision to further progress this option, the Electricity Authority has worked with the system operator to confirm design details that best achieve the intended benefits whilst being sufficiently practicable for implementation by winter 2023.
The confirmed design details include:
- the system operator will publish wind generation forecasts with confidence intervals
- the information will be published via Transpower’s em6 data provision platform.
Given the confirmed design details, the system operator has provided an estimate that this solution could be implemented by mid-May.
Based on the work to progress Option D, the assessment in the decision paper of this option against the Electricity Authority’s statutory objective remains valid and we are confident this option is implementable by winter 2023.