Science Centres: Energy

Each day, NIWA delivers vital hydrological data to M-co, the company that provides information services to the New Zealand electricity market.

Lake level, canal flow, and other generation data are transferred electronically to NIWA’s Christchurch office, where they are processed and sent to M-co.

Such information matters because, on average, 70% of the country’s electricity comes from hydro. Careful management of lake levels is crucial to the electricity supply as lake storage volumes are not large by international standards and inflows vary dramatically. In the future, generation from other renewable energy resources (wind, waves) will make market operations more complex, and NIWA is improving its capabilities in real-time data transfer and environmental forecasting in response.

A range of key electricity market information is publicly available at no cost at COMIT Free to Air (www.comitfree.co.nz). This includes hydrological daily storage and weekly inflow graphs, electricity demand graphs, weekly and monthly summaries, and a range of market pricing information.