Review of potential security, reliability, and resilience concerns arising from future scenarios for the electricity industry

This review by David Reeve and Toby Stevenson was commissioned by the Electricity Authority. In recent years a number of organisations have modelled scenarios of the New Zealand energy sector. The Electricity Authority is now undertaking a review of the potential impacts of technological advances and future changes on the long-term reliability, security, and resilience of New Zealand’s electricity system. One of the initial steps in this review is to assess whether existing recent modelling asks and answers questions specific to this review or whether additional modelling is required. The assessment would include specifying modelling still required to address the issues in the review.
Each exercise has had different purposes in mind, but they share the desire to understand the implications of policies targeting our emissions profiles and the consequence of major decisions in the sector, such as moving to 100 per cent renewable electricity, or the closure of industrial plants, such as Rio Tinto’s aluminium smelter in Southland or Methanex’s methanol production plant in Taranaki.