The national electricity grid operator is warning of possible insufficient power generation to meet households’ demand on Friday.
Transpower has issued a notice saying there was a risk that power generation and reserves would not meet demand between 7.30am-8.30am.
It said if power generators could not provide enough electricity, Transpower would manage demand to avoid a grid emergency.
“The system operator may instruct the grid owner to disconnect feeders without further notice to connected parties,” it said.
Odd that this happens in the morning, I was under the impression peak demand was early evening when everyone gets home?
This page (down the page a bit) shows you’re right. But the second highest is the morning peak, and that graph is averages. In this case it’s an unseasonably cold morning across NZ so for this day in particular they are worried about everyone using their heating at the same time, their forecasts are probably for the morning to have a higher peak on this day in particular.
I wonder if they’re forecasting less generation in the morning, perhaps no wind?
The article got updated to say that capacity is down at the moment because of pre-winter maintenance, and the unseasonably cold weather means they weren’t prepared for this.
That makes sense actually.