State Of The National Grid Lambasted By Transpower Top Man
October 1st, 2008
• Grid investment lagging.
• Modern day demands are extreme.
• System less able to cope with failures.
Transpower CEO Patrick Strange has been painting a gloomy picture on the real state of the national grid. It is the kind of comment the CEOs of SOEs might generally only give if they really want a new Govt to take notice of their issues. Strange says he’s pleased to see $2bn of investment projects under way to strengthen the creaking spine which connects NZ’s often remotely located major power plants to the cities but the bad news is:
• There has hardly been any investment in the national grid since the 1970s, despite exponential growth in demand and now a wave of new power stations being built. While this may be OK since the grid was virtually gold-plated 40 years ago, the asset base is inadequate now.
• The majority of the 220kV lines which form the backbone of the grid are between 20 and 50 years old, and the system’s transformers are disproportionately between 40 and 70 years old. Most of these assets are probably OK, but some of them won’t be and Strange says, “we don’t know which ones.”
• As well as ageing assets, Transpower itself has an ageing workforce, at a time when its engineering, resource consenting and project management needs are about to grow strongly to undertake existing approved upgrades. There are real issues relating to preserving Transpower’s intellectual property, which could impact on the ability to run the kind of deeply secure system a national electricity grid needs to be.
• Pressure for renewable generation in response to climate change is leading to many projects being planned far from centres of demand.
• While the $2bn of scheduled upgrades is a start, a further $3bn to $5bn will be required over the next 10 years, and there’s a huge mismatch between the ratio of approved or planned upgrades versus forecast demand for upgrades out past 20 years.
• Increasing demands on the grid are making it a lot harder to maintain. The most compelling example: time available in a year for South Island maintenance has halved in a decade.
This is all leading to a loss of resilience making it harder for the electricity system to cope when “stuff happens.” Strange is warning unless NZ gets serious about not only building, but also giving the necessary resource consents to allow construction to happen, the national grid will start to fail us in the next few years. While Strange’s fears may be eased somewhat by increasing use of distributed generation – power stations built close to demand and not requiring connection to the grid – this prospect only eases rather solves the issues.
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