MCY Mercury NZ ( MRP Mighty River Power)

[ratkin]

Anyone who has lived in the bike friendly towns and cities in some parts of europe will understand that street planning is critical. NZ towns were run by farmers in the 50's and they dont ride bikes. Today many towns are going to face a problem and many have even recently failed to create the environment for lower targets, Greta even took a swipe at this place this week.

You can see it in town planning and street development. NZ has a problem in that its dispersion means the EV is the only solution which means a complete fleet replacement.

EV has to be high priority. NZ will never ditch the car, and Govts time and again fail to provide alternatives. After the chch earthquakes, council spent millions consulting with top European planners from the Netherlands etc, then promptly ignored everything they said. A great opportunity to restructure the city was wasted.

We need to see massive subsidies, to encourage EV use and gas guzzling 4x4s need to be hit hard with extra taxes. Because if the govt will not bring in trams etc, then that is the only alternative.

[Waltzing]

"A great opportunity to restructure the city was wasted."

oh dear that makes for very depressing reading... your kidding me! Have none of these people lived in holland or denmark, sweden. It should be mandatory for all planners to live in holland.

Off topic , in sweden people often ask me where should they go in NZ.

I have to tell them... NO electric trains to whisk them off into the countryside ... As some of you will know you can stand of the station and here that sound as the electric system starts to wind up... i must research what part of the drive train creates that sound... and then your off! As one engineer said to me... It will sweep you round the coast and up to stockholm... book first class you will love... and i DO!

[Snoopy]

EV has to be high priority. NZ will never ditch the car, and Govts time and again fail to provide alternatives. After the chch earthquakes, council spent millions consulting with top European planners from the Netherlands etc, then promptly ignored everything they said. A great opportunity to restructure the city was wasted.

We need to see massive subsidies, to encourage EV use and gas guzzling 4x4s need to be hit hard with extra taxes. Because if the govt will not bring in trams etc, then that is the only alternative.

News yesterday on Mercury scaling up their EV subscription service.

https://www.mercury.co.nz/news/20201...ion-of-ev-subs

A two year trial based around 60 vehicles will now expand by 50 vehicles per month, until 450 Mercury owned and leased Nissan Leafs are on the road in Auckland. However from a point of view of immediately boosting profits at Mercury, I think expectations should be muted. The reason for this is covered in my 'Fraser's Fantasy' series of three posts on this thread from 2018. (My posts 1004, 1005 and 1016). Worth a read for those that haven't seen them. Do a thread search for the word " Fraser's " and the three posts will come up for a 'quick link'.

SNOOPY

[Waltzing]

" four wheel drive taxes" yes but is the government bold enough to do it and when. Prehaps in 2025 but its a bit like brexit... talk , talk and more talk and then over the clif we go..

What does MR S think about local power generation as seems to have a large depth of research to draw on.

[Snoopy]

What does MR S think about local power generation as seems to have a large depth of research to draw on.

I think you need to keep in mind Jantar's post on the cost structure of the industry below:

The energy component from the retailer is around 8 cents. The remainder is network charges from the lines company, Grid charges from Transpower, and the EA security charge. The actual energy charge can be easily seen from each company's monthly operations report. It is the Netback value: $85 netback is exactly equivalent to 8.5 c per unit.

Edit: To be fair I should add that the actual cost of energy is also shown on the monthly operations reports as just that: Cost of energy. A cost of Energy of $45 means that it costs the company 4.5 c per unit that it supplies. The difference between Netback and CoE is the equivalent of the gross margin.

IMO the way the cost structure is set up in the industry, people who attempt to generate their own power are effectively screwed. The problem is, no matter how much a consumer can save in energy costs, the power providers must still cover their network charges. Those network charges on your bill are not necessarily indicative of the network contribution your energy retailer must pay. And if your energy charges get too low, your retailer will put up their fixed charges to ensure you are fully contributing your share of network costs. You are effectively punished for generating your own electricity.

Networks are based on the old power station to consumer energy model. Effectively the electricity comes down big pipes into smaller and smaller pipes. No consideration is given to the idea that if many households generated their own energy, then those big pipes that are needed to supply the network might not need to be so big. And if the system input is not from one concentrated source, then some of the downstream transformers and switching components might not have to be as high spec either. There are potential network cost savings with a distributed energy network model. But there is no incentive for the network owners to restructure their networks for distributed energy generation. So we are effectively stuck with an historical high cost network model which cannot be challenged. The monopoly network providers simply bill your retailer their old style network costs and that is that.

The other problem is that the most common form of local generation, solar energy, does not generate maximum power when there is maximum demand. From a network provider perspective, you generating maximum power at 3pm is no use when maximum network demand is at 6-7pm when the sun has gone down. Thus solar users need a battery. A hot water tank is one kind of battery. More recently it has been suggested that certain electric cars could be used as power storage reservoirs. It wouldn't be too difficult for Nissan Leaf owners to use their car's battery power to cook their dinner. That is, I think, a more likely path for NZ power consumers to go in the future: Local storage rather than local generation. But are there any local energy retailers willing to reward consumers for alleviating their power demand peaks?

There is one exception to all of this. If you can go totally off grid then you can save all the network supply charges. And that changes the economics of generating your own energy completely.

SNOOPY

[Zaphod]

EV has to be high priority. NZ will never ditch the car, and Govts time and again fail to provide alternatives. After the chch earthquakes, council spent millions consulting with top European planners from the Netherlands etc, then promptly ignored everything they said. A great opportunity to restructure the city was wasted.

We need to see massive subsidies, to encourage EV use and gas guzzling 4x4s need to be hit hard with extra taxes. Because if the govt will not bring in trams etc, then that is the only alternative.

From an environmental perspective, IMO the best thing we can do is reduce consumption. That includes our additional to personal transport. Changing our fleet from ICE to EV will provide significant benefits, but if we're going to continue having a 1:1.3 ration of MV's to population we still have a significant problem in resource utilisation and pollution.

Although I suppose I should look on the positive side: that's a great opportunity for MCY!

[Waltzing]

The question is perhaps for an engineer or economist is what load will the EV fleet place on production capacity of NZ electricity generation?

Thats why i asked about local generation which it appears is not encouraged by the existing system and perhaps needs changes to regulations to allow it.

[Snoopy]

The question is perhaps for an engineer or economist is what load will the EV fleet place on production capacity of NZ electricity generation?

If I may quote myself from the 'Fraser's Fantasy' series

Mercury lists the Nissan Leaf's (by far the most popular electric car) EV commute efficiency as 17 kWh/100km. Let's say our typical Auckland EV commuter owner travelled 150km per week. This means the annual energy used would be:

52 x 17kWh x 1.5 = 1326 kWh

So if the above is what 1 EV is using, let's scale the number of EVs up to one million.

1.326MWh x 1,000,000 = 1.326 x 10^6 MWh

Now how much energy could MRP generate from their Geothermal stations in a year?

(466MW x 0.94) x 24hrs/day x 365 days/year = 3.837 x 10^6 MWh

You would have to factor in some line losses of course, say 10%. But it does look like Mercury's geothermal stations alone could power

1m x 0.9x(3.837 x 10^6 MWh) /( 1.326 x 10^6 MWh) = 2.6 million electric cars

Nga Awa Purua, at 138MW, the largest of Mercury's geothermal stations, could produce.

(138MW x 0.94) x 24hrs/day x 365 days/year = 1.136 x 10^6 MWh of energy.

That alone could power 0.9 x1.136/1.326 x 1m = 771,000 cars

That seems a lot. But I guess it goes to show how large these geothermal power stations are.

Thats why i asked about local generation which it appears is not encouraged by the existing system and perhaps needs changes to regulations to allow it.

Local generation does make sense for cars parked during the day, as electric cars can store energy to be used later. Maybe there should be an incentive for employers to put on solar panels so their employees can charge their cars while the sun shines at work?

SNOOPY

[Waltzing]

Im snowed under with the research MR S is publishing, be it the banks, SKL or now the generators...

Harping on about bikes as the Kiwi saviour... probably not well received by SUV loving Kiwis who have been brain washed by AUSSI car adverts for decades... imagine a big tax on car racing in AUS.

But its making the head lines here at last but im afraid look no farther than your local council and ask them if they have a bike in the car port... Perhaps if they cant pedal an e Bike might get them out and about. Im constantly passed up hills by old fatties on their E BIKES!

https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/...ns-in-auckland

[Waltzing]

"That seems a lot. But I guess it goes to show how large these geothermal power stations are."

if only i had know that this figure may be in the ball park and if correct our trading of MCY should have been A HOLD!

What are the geo thermal stats producing at the moment?