New Zealand’s Electricity

New Zealand mainly uses renewable energy sources and most of the New Zealand’s Electricity is generated from the hydro-electric stations and the rest of it is generated from both geothermal, wind power and thermal. Electricity demand has grown by an average of 2.1 per cent per year since 1974 and 0.6 per cent from 2005 to 2011. New Zealand has been called as one of the least energy efficient countries in comparison to the economic output against electricity consumption, despite being slightly above global average in the list of countries by energy intensity. The National Grid which is owned and operated by Trans power New Zealand is the high voltage transmission network of lines and substations connecting areas of generation with cities and towns across the whole nation.

Assets of the existing Trans power includes more than 11,000 route kilometers of transmission lines and these are about 25,000 towers and 16,000 poles, 174 substations together with about 2300 circuit breakers and 1000 power transformers. The majority of New Zealand’s electricity is generated from hydro-electric if from the stations established on the rivers and the lakes of the lower half of the South Island, and in reality most of the electricity demand is in the North Island and in particularly, the Auckland regions. There has always been a debate on whether or not the transmission lines are the best way to carry on in providing the power with this increasing demand. As the owner and operator of the National Grid, Tran’s power is planning up to $1.5 billion of new investment, and before this could be approved, it needs to assure that the Electricity Commission has no better way of doing the job.

The main purpose of the North Auckland and Northland (NAaN) Grid u...

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...es the combination of both but in consideration with the cost, efficiency and the location.

In New Zealand, technology is limited so other methods of generating power without the use of transmission lines are limited as well. Trans power New Zealand could further invest in implementing new ideas to provide a solution to the alternatives and may be they could come up with some new ways of generating and distributing the electricity but my idea is not limited as well, because the suggestions have confirmed the sustainability of configuration of the existing grid, even though the capacity needs to be increased over time as the grid flows should continue to be dominated by the large amounts of loads in the north island regions particularly the upper side and thus electricity will be continuously to flow predominantly from the renewable generation in the south regions.