Latest / The Kākā by Bernard Hickey
Why we almost blacked out and how to fix it
TL;DR: An unseasonally early icy blast at the same time as some long-overdue maintenance almost caused Aotearoa-NZ’s electricity system to black out this week. That’s because a quadropoly of gentailers have prioritised paying dividends from their rising profits and adding debt over investing in 1.5 GigaWatts of new wind farms that were already consented over the last decade.
Official inquiries, the OECD, consumer and worker advocates, and countless frustrated and/or failed independent electricity retailers have called on the Government to break up or regulate the quadropoly in a way that…
The skinny
The skinny isn't ready yet — notes appear once the transcript is processed.