Final phase of real-time pricing

On 27 April 2023, the final phase of our Real-time pricing project goes live enabling participants to bid and offer their demand flexibility and distributed energy resources into the wholesale market. The introduction of the dispatch notification product and dispatchable demand enhancements will pave the way for increased renewable generation as New Zealand transitions to a low‑emissions economy.

Dispatch notification

The dispatch notification product opens up a low-cost path for small-scale providers (such as residential, solar and battery system aggregators) to bid and offer their resources into the wholesale market, subject to approval by the system operator. Allowing these distributed resources to interact with the market will contribute to displacing gas powered peaking plants and using more renewable sources of energy.

If you are a small-scale provider or retailer, now is the time to think about:

• the quantity of flexible resource currently available to you and expected resource growth
• what tool and process changes are needed to realise the full benefits of real-time pricing and the dispatch notification product
• new product offerings you could deliver to support customer retention
• smart technologies and how they may help consumers manage demand control and monitoring
• whether any consumer energy management systems will be managed in-house or by a third party – the use of domestic or commercial loads to provide physical peak price hedges may be a strong commercial benefit.

Listen to our engagement session on dispatch notification to learn more

Dispatchable demand

Enhancements to dispatchable demand will allow large industrial consumers to bid in demand management in a way that better suits the physical constraints of their plant and processes. Large industrial consumers can manage their exposure by having part of their load based on fixed price and the other part on demand response and bidding that demand response into the wholesale market. This will enable:

• better management of spot price volatility
• an alternative to financial hedges to manage spot price exposure
• better outcomes for large industrial participants bidding dispatchable demand and/or offering interruptible load to the instantaneous reserves as it allows.

Signalling your load control through dispatchable demand could allow you to control your consumption at times that provide the best value for you.

Listen to our engagement session on dispatchable demand to learn more

How to get started

The system operator is available to discuss how your demand flexibility or distributed energy resources can participate in the wholesale market. Please contact the system operator on market.operations@transpower.co.nz for further details.