This page provides comparisons of actual electricity demand with Security of Supply forecasts, covering the last few years.

Background

As part of the Annual Security Assessment 2008 pdf [382 KB], five-year forecasts of annual peak demand and total electricity demand were produced. Both expected and ‘prudent’ (5% probability of exceedence) forecasts were included.

These five-year forecasts are distinct from the much longer-term econometric forecasts included in the Grid Planning Assumptions and published in the Statement of Opportunities.

When the Annual Security Assessment 2009 was prepared, the five-year forecasts were adjusted based on information provided by distributors and direct-connect consumers, rather than being completely rebuilt. This led to reductions in energy and peak demand projections for both the North and South Island. The Assessment document pdf [532 KB] sets out the changes and describes the rationale.

It is useful to compare actual demand with forecasts, so as to:

• assess the accuracy of the forecasts; and
• potentially, anticipate risks to security of supply caused by faster-than-expected demand growth.

Monthly reports

• August 2010 pdf [159 KB]
• July 2010 pdf [135 KB]
• June 2010 pdf [157 KB]
• May 2010 pdf [159 KB]
• April 2010 pdf [157 KB]
• March 2010 pdf [179 KB]

The monthly reports show (for New Zealand as a whole and each island):

• daily peak demand over 2007-10;
• cumulative energy demand over 2007-10;
• annual peak demand over 2002-10; and
• annual total energy demand over 2002-10.
  

Each report includes data up until the end of the previous month (e.g. the March 2010 report provides data up until the end of February 2010).

Please note that, while the measure of demand used is consistent with the five-year Security of Supply forecast, it will not be consistent with various other measures of demand used elsewhere. For example, a dataset recording instantaneous peak demand would show higher figures than the half-hourly peak demands in these reports. Therefore, we do not recommend trying to directly compare the figures in these reports with data from other sources.

Links

For other sources of information on demand trends, see:

• COMIT Free to Air: Demand (demand graph and downloadable data)
• Centralised Dataset web interface (no graphs, but a simple query tool for downloading data covering various regions and time scales).