1. This notice of a recommendation and assessment concerning the Electricity Governance Rules 2003 (“Rules”), Rule Amendment Proposal No. 131, 2008, is issued by the Electricity Commission (“Commission”), pursuant to section 172E(2)(c) of the Electricity Act 1992 (“Act”).
2. The Act provides that, no later than 10 working days after making a recommendation to the Minister of Energy concerning the Rules, the Commission must publicise the recommendation and the assessment completed under section 172F of the Act.
Recommended Amendments to the Rules
3. On 25 September 2008, the Commission recommended the existing Schedule C5 of Part C of the Rules, which contains the system operator’s procurement plan, be replaced in its entirety with a new Schedule C5.
4. The key differences between the existing Schedule C5 and the one now recommended by the Commission are:
(a) provision for subcontracting of ancillary services
– to allow for contracted ancillary service providers to sub-contract services. The contracted Ancillary Service Agent (“ASA”) would remain primarily responsible for the performance of those contracted obligations (clause 71A);
(b) change to the specification of frequency keeping performance:
(i) the requirement for an ASA to use “reasonable endeavours” to commence to respond to the system operator’s instructions would be removed and replaced with a requirement for the ASA to respond to eliminate the grid frequency error (clause 88.1); and
(ii) the requirement relating to the response rate required from a frequency keeper would be relaxed to enable a wider variety of generating plant to be used to provide frequency keeping services (clauses 88.2 and 88A);
(c) change to the selection of frequency keeping offers – to allow the system operator to select more than
one offer to meet the frequency keeping MW band requirement (clause 115);
(d) provision for fixed price frequency keeping – to provide for fixed price frequency keeping offers
to be considered as an alternative to the existing “half-hourly” procured service (refer in particular to clauses 26A, 39A, 103A, 105A, and 105B); and
(e) change to the measurement of Interruptible Load (“IL”):
(i) to allow an ASA to offer smaller quantities of reserve by confirming performance with equipment on site where it would otherwise be lost in the “noise” at the Grid Exit Point, and to use average MW data to confirm performance of IL offered as Sustained Instantaneous Reserve but not Fast Instantaneous Reserve, (clauses 125.3 and 130.2); and
(ii) to clarify how the system operator accounts for pre-event load changes when assessing the performance of IL providers (clause 126).
5. A copy of the Commission’s recommendation and assessment is available, at no cost, on the Commission’s website at
http://www.electricitycommission.govt.nz/rulesandregs/recommend
Dated at Wellington this 25th day of September 2008.
For and on behalf of the Electricity Commission:
DAVID CAYGILL, Chair.