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24 March 2020

Welcome to Market Brief, the Electricity Authority’s weekly update on regulatory and market developments.

COVID-19 Authority update
Raising consumer awareness of Utilities Disputes and Powerswitch services - submissions published
Enduring market making: Industry-led options development
Release of Review of Spring 2018
Current consultations

COVID-19 Authority update

We are all facing new challenges as we move into an Alert 4 environment. We appreciate there will be pressures and we need to accommodate these different working circumstances.

The Authority is working remotely and we will continue to operate in our role as the regulator of the electricity industry. Our systems are set up and we have all the right technology to work from home and connect with each other and our stakeholders.

Our people are our priority and we need to make sure they are doing everything they need to do right now to protect themselves and their families, and to plan for living in an Alert 4 environment.

We will continue to work with our service providers to make sure they have everything in place to manage this extraordinary situation and to discuss alternative audit and reporting requirements.

We do not want to add to the stress on businesses or individuals right now. We will take a practical approach to support the system and give assurance to the industry and to all New Zealanders.

We will continue to carefully monitor the market and respond if need be. We have the right systems in place to manage any situation.

Staying connected
It’s important we stay connected and we continue to communicate key updates including work progress, consultations and other important information. The latest updates are listed below.

We will continue to use Market Brief, our website and social channels to stay connected and send updates.

In the meantime, please take care and email us if you have any questions.

E: info@ea.govt.nz
E: communications@ea.govt.nz

Raising consumer awareness of Utilities Disputes and Powerswitch services - submissions published

In January 2020, we released a consultation paper seeking feedback on a proposal to increase consumer awareness of Utilities Disputes and Powerswitch. Submissions closed on Tuesday, 3 March 2020.

We received 24 submissions and these have been published on the Authority’s website.

Read submissions

Enduring market making: Industry-led options development

An ongoing priority for the Authority is designing enduring and sustainable enhancements to market-making arrangements for exchange traded hedge products. In 2019, the Minister of Energy and Resources accepted the Electricity Price Review’s recommendation to introduce mandatory market-making unless the sector developed an effective incentive-based scheme.

The Authority has sent letters to market makers and other large physical participants offering to support the establishment of a forum for developing an industry view on a suitable incentive-based market-making scheme. Any such forum would operate in parallel with the Authority’s work on enduring market making arrangements, and would be another input into the Authority Board’s decision making on high level design (expected to be in June 2020).

Read the letters

Release of Review of Spring 2018

We have released the market performance review of spring 2018.

This review gives an overview of the events of spring 2018 and covers specific issues that arose but were outside the scope of the 2018 UTS decision. These issues include:

the November HVDC outage
thermal generators offer behaviour
the hedge disclosure database, and
availability of public information on gas production.

Read the report

Current consultations

High Standard of Trading Conduct provisions: a review by the MDAG discussion paper

Ending: 06/04/2020 5pm

Level 7, Harbour Tower, 2 Hunter Street, PO Box 10041, Wellington 6143, New Zealand
Tel: + 64 4 460 8860 Email: info@ea.govt.nz