All Blacks “demanding” support from home with electric performance at RWC 2023

Both the quarter and semi-final games had a similar pattern of higher demand than was forecast. Demand forecasts for the semi-final were the closest, but still lower by about 130MW. This closer forecast could be down to the semi-final being on a Saturday instead of a Sunday morning - electricity demand is usually higher on Saturdays.

TESLA are contracted by Transpower to forecast electricity demand in New Zealand. Henry Chen (a senior analyst at TESLA) looked at the demand pattern during the semi-final against Argentina. TESLA said it would use the quarter-final data to update their forecasts for the final, because both games occurred on the same day at the same time.

But despite the final also being on a Sunday, electricity demand was around 300MW higher than demand during the quarter-final.

These events highlight the problems that forecasters of electricity demand face, especially when there are no similar historical instances. For example, the 2015 Rugby World Cup held in England was a bit different, as the games were earlier in the morning New Zealand time. However, the graph below shows a similar increase to Sunday morning demand from the 2015 final compared to historical Sunday demand.

Thankfully early morning weekend demand is usually a lot lower than during the week. So even with these unexpected impacts, having enough available supply to meet demand is not an issue. However, forecasting errors – in both demand and intermittent generation – can affect wholesale prices.

During the quarter-final game, wholesale electricity prices were higher than usual for a Sunday morning. The Sunday of the final also saw some higher prices. This was likely due to a combination of low wind conditions combined with high demand and more thermal generation running.