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At a national level, hydro storage remains below the tenth percentile for this time of year. However, risk to security of supply remains low due to thermal generation availability and declining risk curves from now until summer.
Over the past week national hydro storage has decreased by 8% to 67% of the historical average for this time of year. South Island hydro storage fell by 6% to 70% of average. North Island hydro storage decreased by 17% to 44% of average.
Contributing factors to the higher rate of hydro storage decline were an increase in national demand, increased hydro generation to replace lower wind generation and continued low hydro inflows.
There is a string of small to medium outages impacting Pohokura production over the next 3 weeks in addition to its faster than expected declining output. This situation does not currently appear to be materially impacting thermal generation availability and Methanex appears to be absorbing much of the supply decreases with a large drop in its gas demand. Details can be found on the Gas Industry Company website here.
While we have observed a shift in distribution of demand in the Auckland region, we have not observed any material changes to total weekly demand as a result of varying COVID-19 alert levels coming into effect around the country. Therefore this poses no material changes to security of supply.
Nationally, weekly electricity demand rose by 2.8% to reach 846 GWh.
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