New Zealanders reach electricity savings target

3.00pm

New Zealanders got a pat on the back from Winter Power Taskforce today for exceeding the electricity savings target of 10 per cent.

Taskforce co-ordinator Patrick Strange said the 10 per cent target had always been a stretch and going over it yesterday was the result of considerable effort by homes and businesses throughout the country.

"The response to our call for savings has been fantastic. We have seen the level of savings climb steadily over the past six weeks to reach 10.1 per cent for the 24 hours ended midnight last night.

"This savings effort has been a major factor in the recent improvement in the levels of hydro lakes," Dr Strange said in a statement.

At the time the savings target was increased to 10 per cent in late April, hydro lakes were at 61 per cent of average. Yesterday, that had improved to 84 per cent of average, thanks to lower electricity demand and recent rainfall, he said.

"The latest three-month forecast by (National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research) Niwa is predicting normal rainfall for the major hydro catchment regions, which is encouraging news.

"While we are not yet out of the woods, the situation is now better than a few weeks ago."

Dr Strange said that while the risk of cuts was less, it was important to remember that the country was only officially five days into winter.

"Winter still has a long way to go and our modelling shows there is still a chance of shortages later this winter if the snow melt is low and spring weather is dry. This would stretch our limited sources of thermal fuel," he said.

"My job is to take a realistic but conservative approach and for this reason we're asking people to continue to conserve electricity for a few more weeks until we can say with confidence that we have enough supply to meet all scenarios."

Dr Strange said the taskforce would look again at the supply situation toward the end of this month.

Meanwhile the nation's hydro and thermal generators cranked out more electricity in the March quarter than in the same period in previous years, according to Statistics New Zealand.

It said electricity generation for the three months to March 31 reached 8488 gigawatt hours (GWh), 1.7 percent up on the previous March quarter.

This was "the highest level recorded for a March quarter", Statistics NZ said.

However, in an apparent anomaly, electricity had pinched back 3.7 percent on that generated in the December quarter last year, the statistics showed.

In the March quarter this year, hydro generation was 5519GWh, 2.2 percent lower than in the same period last year. Thermal generation was 2968GWh, 9.7 percent higher.

It was "a period in which electricity generation using thermal energy reached the highest level recorded in a March quarter," Statistics NZ said in a statement.

Hydro generation supplied 65 percent of the electricity generated in the March quarter, compared with 68 percent a year earlier, continuing the below 70 percent trend of the past five years.

Gas production was 9.5 percent lower in the March quarter when stacked against that of last year.

The highest level of gas production, 240,000 terajoules, was in 2002.

Production crude petroleum was 1.1 million tonnes in the year to March, a 1 percent rise on that in the same period last year.

"The volume of crude petroleum produced was 39.9 percent lower than in the year ended March 1994, when production peaked at 1.9 million tonnes," Statistics NZ said.

Refined petrol production was up 1.6 percent in the year to March as was diesel, by 6.8 percent, for the same period.

Also in the March quarter, deliveries of petrol (613,000 tonnes) and diesel (572 tonnes) to resellers and direct to industry were up 7.3 percent and 8.3 percent respectively.

- NZPA