Cash incentives in bid to stop electricity blackouts

By MONIQUE DEVEREUX and NZPA

Big businesses have been offered cash incentives to reduce electricity use in peak evening hours this winter to help avoid rolling power cuts across the South Island.

The Electricity Commission and power companies have been in urgent talks to find a solution to threats of blackouts from Ashburton, in Mid-Canterbury, to Nelson and Blenheim.

State-owned enterprise Transpower warned the commission last month about the potential problem.

The ability to get the power into the region is the problem, especially if a cold snap hits and demand soars.

Transpower communications executive Chris Roberts said very little power was generated in Canterbury or Marlborough so the region took 88 per cent of its electricity from the four lines running north out of the Waitaki Valley, in Central Otago.

"But there is only so much electricity we can push through those four lines," Mr Roberts said.

"So if we got a very cold night and a real peak in demand for electricity at around 6pm and that spike in demand exceeded the capacity of our lines. It would mean there would be a particular lines company that would not have enough electricity to supply all its customers and would have to turn some of them off."

"So the worst case might be Nelson turning 2 per cent of their customers off for an hour. But the risk would be there every cold day."

Commissioner Roy Hemmingway admitted there might be a problem if a cold snap hit "tonight or tomorrow night" but said plans were under way to ensure the general consumer did not face involuntary blackouts.

He said obvious options were bringing in extra generation and reducing the supply at peak times.

Big industrial sites in the region had already been approached with cash incentives to assist, although he did not know how much cash was offered.

Mr Hemmingway said he wanted to make it clear that this was a transmission problem affecting a certain area, not a countrywide problem and not an issue of insufficient power.

Meanwhile, in Waikato up to 1000 farmers and other landowners could be affected by a $1.5 billion Transpower project that will see 220km of lines installed and new transmission towers as high as 75m built in the region.

The project, to upgrade the lines network in the central North Island and Canterbury, is to meet ballooning demand for electricity in Auckland and Christchurch.

Transpower's existing capacity - supported by a network of 220kv and 110kv lines - would not be enough to meet the needs of Auckland by the year 2010, TransPower chief executive Ralph Craven said.

A new 400kv line would be installed from Whakamaru to Otahuhu, impacting on the scenery and amenity values.