Paper mill stop yields big power saving

By CATHY ARONSON AND VERNON SMALL

Waikato, Bay of Plenty and King Country power subscribers have made savings of 21.8 per cent electricity - the best in the country - but much of the savings are due to the shutdown of the power-hungry Tasman Pulp and Paper mill.

The region's achievement is double the 10 per cent savings the Government wants over the next nine weeks to avert blackouts.

But a big chunk of the savings results from the shutdown of the Tasman mill in Kawerau, the country's second-largest industrial power user after the Comalco aluminium smelter near Bluff.

The mill used 10MW of electricity on Sunday compared to its average 140MW to 170MW a day.

Ceridwyn Roberts, a spokeswoman for market overseer Mco Electricity, said the closure would have contributed to the reduction in power use.

The paper mill, which uses the majority of the power, closed on Friday until tomorrow for maintenance and inventory down-time.

The pulp mill was using only 25 per cent of its normal power after resorting to alternative power sources because of maintenance to its main powerlines.

Yesterday, Energy Minister Pete Hodgson had the third meeting with consumer and industry groups and said a fourth meeting would be held next Monday.

He said that as well as Mercury and Meridian, a third, unnamed, generator-retailer would offer rebates for customers who saved power.

But it was proving difficult for some retailers to respond to his call for rebates, especially those that had seen significant customer switching.

Mr Hodgson said a proposal was being evaluated to set up a secondary market so customers could sell power they did not need.

He said hydro storage lakes had had "an even week" after some rain in the Waiau and Waitaki River catchments but it had added little more than one day's supply.

Savings so far had been satisfactory, peaking at almost 11 per cent on Sunday, but he was now focusing on the seven-day rolling average.

This had reached 6.57 per cent and was heading up, but there was still some way to go.

Savings over the remaining weeks would need to be as high as 10.5 per cent to compensate for falling below the target in the early days of the campaign.

"We have still got an approaching crisis, but we don't have one yet," Mr Hodgson said.

He still believed the target of 10 per cent savings over 10 weeks would significantly reduce the risk of rolling blackouts.

At the weekend, about 6 or 7 per cent of production had been fed south through the Cook Strait cable to help to conserve water in the southern lakes.

Prices had fallen from 33c to 22.5c a kilowatt hour over the past week.

But Mr Hodgson would not predict whether they would continue to fall.

He said he had not established finally when to declare a "stage-three crisis", and it would depend on factors like the weather forecast.

But it was likely that storage levels, now at 1300 gigawatt hours, would have to fall to "measurably below" 1000 gWh hours before a crisis was reached.

He would not comment on regional savings.

In the Waikato, public groups, including the Hamilton City Council and Waikato Hospital, have turned off non-essential lights, heaters and equipment to met the Government's call for power savings.

Waikato Hospital, which uses about 1.2 million kilowatt hours a month, is turning down power supply during the off-peak.

Facilities manager Brendan Hague said a 10 per cent power reduction a month would be enough to power 120 households.

On the streets of Hamilton, people said they were responding to the Government's call.

Retired Otorohanga man Jack Baker, who was shopping in Hamilton yesterday, said: "What they are doing at the moment is a hell of a good idea. It's better for us because we could be cheating a blackout.

"We don't want blackouts. It's all in our own interests to save power," Mr Baker said.

He said his household had changed its ways.

"We were terrible with power; we had every light in the house on at night."

Feature: Electricity

Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority