Cities bump up power savings

By KEVIN TAYLOR

The big cities have caught up with provinces in the race to reach the 10 per cent power savings target to avoid hot- water cuts or even blackouts this winter.

The Winter Power Taskforce said yesterday that Auckland and the Far North achieved 4 per cent savings in the week to Sunday, up from 1.9 per cent the week before.

The Wellington region made the most gain, up from 2.5 to 5 per cent. Savings in Christchurch and the upper South Island went from 2.5 to 4.8 per cent.

Taskforce chairman Dr Patrick Strange said the reason for the difference was power-saving by businesses.

"In the past week or so we've seen large numbers of significant business operations announce internal power savings programmes or changes to work practices in an effort to conserve power."

The country is facing hot-water cuts or even blackouts this winter if electricity consumption is not reduced by 10 per cent because of low hydro-lake inflows.

Dr Strange said both local and central government had set challenging power savings targets, and that might be reflected in the Wellington figures. The state sector has been set a 15 per cent savings target.

Nationwide energy savings reached 5.7 per cent on Tuesday, the highest yet, but still far from the 10 per cent target.

Dr Strange said recent moves by the big electricity retailers to offer incentives to their customers to save power would help boost savings levels.

The latest scheme was announced yesterday by Contact Energy, which ran a similar campaign in 2001.

It will donate up to $3.5 million to community projects throughout the country if its customers cut power use by 10 per cent over the next two months.

Meanwhile, Auckland lines company Vector denied yesterday that it would face claims of breach of contract from customers if hot-water cuts for up to 18 hours a day were introduced.

National energy spokesman Gerry Brownlee claimed in Parliament that a contractual anomaly could let Aucklanders escape cold showers because Vector cannot cut their water heating for more than five hours a day.

But a spokeswoman for Vector said that if there was an instruction from the relevant authority, it could cut water heating for up to 18 hours a day and not breach its contracts with customers.

Dr Strange said there were no plans yet for hot-water cuts.

"We would do it reluctantly. The focus is on the savings."