Originally Posted by
Jantar
xafalcon wrote: "if that extra electricity is released to market it will reduce returns of all generators and sp will follow."
Not true. Because of line constraints that extra energy cannot be transferred out of the lower South Island. So the only stations affected will be Manapouri, Roxburgh and Waipori hydro (and Clyde to a lesser extent), and White and Mahinerangi wind farms. Contact owns the Clyde and Roxburgh stations, but also has significant geothermal and thermal plant in the North Island. So overall it would only be Meridian that would be adversely affected in the short term.
Once Transpower upgrade the circuits to all more of Manapouri's generation to flow north, then that would co-incide with the scheduled progressive shutdown of genesis's remaining Huntly coal fired units, the net gain to the nation in energy by adding Tiwai's demand and subtracting Huntly's generation is only 85 MW.