Electricity Authority releases first Energy Margin Dashboard

This evening the Electricity Authority released the first weekly Energy Margin Dashboard, which allows people to see the energy margins generators are making when selling into the wholesale electricity market.

Sarah Gillies, chief executive of the Electricity Authority said this data is the start of a series which will give consumers much clearer visibility of which generators are doing well out of the electricity market each week and how New Zealand maintains security of supply.

“The wholesale market is very complicated and at the moment it is unusually volatile. In times of scarce hydro supply, New Zealand is reliant on coal and gas to keep the lights on. That is reflected in the data. As more and more data come into the dashboard it will start to show a picture of how the market is working and reflects the different fuel sources,” she said.

The data in the dashboard is based on figures provided by the generators to the Electricity Authority, and then a standard formula was used to generate an indicative energy margin for the week for each of the six companies modelled.

“As the wholesale market works on half-hourly basis this isn’t ‘live’ data, but it will bring an additional level of transparency,” Sarah Gillies said.

“With the fuel shortages we have been experiencing there have been some large price spikes in the market, and this information will give more information about generator energy margins.”

The Electricity Authority and industry have been working on a number of measures to help ease shortages and increase supply in the market.

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