by Chris Hargreaves | Jul 7, 2023 | Case Studies, solar power
Total Utilities partners with Kristin School to provide real-time monitoring of solar panel performance with our world-class energy monitoring solution.
- Measuring and analysing solar power to calculate return on investment (ROI).
- Tracking energy savings & identifying opportunities for improved solar performance.
- Providing educational opportunities for students with solar lab to monitor real-time generation.
- Helping Kristin School reduce reliance on grid and achieve sustainability goals.
Kristin powers its way to brighter, greener future
Kristin School in Auckland has been committed to sustainability for many years, with a target of reducing carbon emissions by 50% by 2030.
The school first began installing solar panels in 2019 as part of a sustainability initiative named ‘The Lightbox Project.’ Two years later, they called upon Total Utilities for a full solar review and to recommend a service provider for further solar installations to extend the solar project.
That done, the next step was to call upon our expertise to help them measure and quantify real-time solar generation and measure sustainability gains.
Using Centrica Business Solutions’ energy insights technology, Total Utilities was able to assist Kristin gain invaluable insights into solar power generation, whilst also providing amazing real-life learning opportunities for students with a solar monitoring lab.
Delivering competitive advantage with real time energy monitoring
- Total Utilities has an exclusive partnership with Centrica Business Solutions to deliver its Panoramic Power energy insights solution.
- Panoramic Power provides world-class energy visibility and intelligence using wireless sensor technology that transmits data from all energy-using equipment in real time to the Cloud.
- Our expert team analyses data to provide cutting edge energy insights and advice to deliver cost and energy savings for clients.
- Panoramic Power is quick to install, requires no maintenance and is a revolution in energy management.
Basking in solar
Working together with Total Utilities, Kristin School has gained important insights into the benefits of its solar investment:
- Increased sustainability. Total Utilities has been able to provide real-time insights into energy savings – a major step forward in helping the school measure its carbon footprint and achieve its goal of becoming carbon neutral.
- Reduced power consumption. Energy insights provided by Total Utilities show exactly where and when solar energy is being generated, providing reassurance on return on investment.
- Carbon credits. Kristin can now accurately calculate excess solar generated, earning carbon credits to offset the school’s carbon emissions and generate revenue.
- Educational opportunities. The ‘Power Radar’ dashboard is an invaluable educational resource for students to learn about how solar energy can be used to power schools, businesses and homes.
Kristin School’s glowing report card for Total Utilities
Director of Business Services for Kristin School, Nigel Wilkinson said;
“The energy insight tools provided by Total Utilities have enabled us to measure solar power generated building by building, and the dashboard is so quick and easy to use with no training. Before it was installed, it was difficult to have confidence in exactly what was being generated and used.
As well as reassuring us about the ongoing viability of solar panels, the solar dashboard now enables me to confidently report back to the school board on our solar performance.
Additionally, the solar lab provided by Total Utilities is an excellent educational tool for students, allowing them to assess data and learn about renewable energy for projects and assignments.
All new buildings and upgrades now include solar panels. I can only see an increase in student and parent interest in renewable energy, and it’s important for us to be able to report on our commitment to reducing emissions and improving sustainability both now and in the future.”
A greener future for our children
Total Utilities energy insights and reporting capability allows Kristin School to determine exactly how energy is consumed and potentially wasted on campus.
This is an important step forward for schools such as Kristin who require an affordable, data-driven solution to reduce waste and carbon emissions in order to meet the government’s goal of NetZero emissions by 2050.
Armed with energy insights provided by Total Utilities, schools and businesses can accurately measure cost-savings and environmental benefits of solar.
Our energy insight services are ideal for any school or business wanting to reduce costs and carbon emissions, drive efficiency and ensure reliability of power.
With the clock ticking on a global environmental crisis, harnessing renewable solar energy is a great step forward to ensure a brighter, greener future for our children.
Keen for your business to enjoy similar outcomes? Email us at [email protected]
Kristin School Case Study Download
by Chris Hargreaves | May 21, 2023 | News, Press Release
Electricity transmission pricing hike delivers nasty jolt
Changes to national grid operator Transpower’s transmission charges took effect in April – and as with most things in life, there are winners and losers.The updated transmission pricing methodology (known as TPM) significantly differs from previous years, and has delivered a mixed bag of rises and cuts for domestic and industrial users.
State owned enterprise, Transpower, has been allowed to recover $830 million by the Commerce Commission for running the network and the increased costs are now being passed on to end users.
Changes to charging methodology
Transpower Head of Grid Pricing Rebecca Osborne said the Electricity Authority has designed the new methodology to more closely reflect the costs and expected benefits of electricity transported across Transpower’s 12,000 kilometres of transmission lines.
There should be no surprises across the electricity industry about the new transmission charges, she said.
“We’ve consulted with customers along the way and provided information as the elements have developed, including updating our indicative prices… and providing indicative rates information in early November.”
“Total transmission revenue, as set by the Commerce Commission, remains the same, but how it is distributed among Transpower customers has changed.”
Encourage renewable generation
The Authority expects the new approach to transmission charges to encourage investment in renewable generation and electrification of industrial processes.
According to Transpower, the main change in the new transmission pricing is a move to a benefit-based approach where customers pay in proportion to the benefit they are expected to receive from some historic and all future transmission investments.
The previous methodology spread the cost of the HVDC (High Voltage Direct Current) link connecting the two main islands across South Island generators and spread the cost of all other interconnection assets across local lines companies and major industrial users.
Some Northland, East & West Coast customers hit hardest
In general, this means cost increases for local lines companies and some of the largest industrial customers in the north of the country because they are further away from where the bulk of generation is located in the South Island.
It also means North Island generators will begin contributing to the cost of the interconnected transmission assets and South Island generators will contribute less.
Consumers in Northland, the east coast of the North Island, and the West Coast have faced the biggest hikes, while Wellington and some South Island areas have seen prices fall.
The final amount that consumers pay for their transmission charges is ultimately decided by local lines companies, these charges typically make up between 8 and 10 percent of power bills.
Big power users such as the Tiwai Point aluminium smelter have seen an almost $10m price cut, while NZ Steel mill at Glenbrook faces an $11m increase.
Earlier in the year the Electricity Authority calculated movements would generally be small.
Those most affected may take issue with this. Indeed, Buller Electricity filed for a judicial review after being told its transmission charges would rise by 427 percent.
by David Spratt | Apr 5, 2023 | Energy, News
As renters and homeowners in the 1970s and 80s we were accustomed to hot water cylinder ‘ripple control’ – the mechanism whereby power companies assured us of a cold shower when we got home from work.
The trade-off was that households were able to operate stoves, lights and televisions without power cuts. Then along came the Clyde Dam and all this went away.
Until now.
If we take all our light vehicles off the road and replace them with EVs, this would increase our electricity demand by 20% (EECA Nov 2022). Add to this new ‘green’ data centres built by Google, Microsoft, AWS and our own IT companies, and this will likely add a further 10% to our current electricity needs. Our already stretched electricity supply infrastructure simply won’t cope.
The Energy Trilemma is defined as the need to find balance between energy reliability, affordability, and sustainability and its impact on everyday lives.
Understanding the challenges to balancing these three core elements is vital to keeping the lights on, the economy operating and achieving goals such as Net Zero carbon emissions.
Energy Reliability
The energy system aimed at ensuring reliability in New Zealand is made up of three interconnected parts:
Generation which comes mainly from the dams in South Island Lakes.
Transmission – Transpower’s multibillion dollar electricity supply backbone, built mainly in the 1950s and 1980s on 30,000 properties, with 25,000 transmission towers supporting 11,000 kms of lines and their essential 170 substations.
Distribution – Delivering electricity to homes and businesses via 27 regional Lines Companies, most of whom are locally owned. These companies own the power poles, lines and transformers that bring electricity to our door.
These three elements are highly regulated and involve investments in assets worth billions of dollars.
Our whole energy system is funded by debt that must be paid for by current and future generations.
Who pays and when is the big issue here. Is it today’s user, their children or their children’s children?
This is called intergenerational debt servicing and presents huge challenges when deciding the fairest way to distribute the cost of assets that in some instances might have a useful life of fifty years or more – or in the case of dams much longer than that.
To make things worse, an emerging issue with these investments is the risk of what is known as ‘stranded assets.’ This happens when transformational technologies such as solar and wind based distributed energy systems makes further investment in centralised dams, transmission and distribution uneconomic. When this happens the debt remains but the ability to pay by leveraging (charging for) existing or new assets is reduced or disappears completely.
Affordability and Equity
The New Zealand economy is reliant on agriculture which in turn is reliant on energy. However, economic theory suggests that on a ‘user pays’ basis, a farmer in a remote location should pay more than an apartment dweller in a big city or town. After all it is, at first glance, far cheaper to provide an urban dweller power than it is to run kilometres of copper wire to a small number of farms down a rural highway.
Recent changes to the way costs are allocated for Transpower’s transmission backbone came up with the proposition that the further you are from the source of the power (the lakes) the more you pay because you accrue greater benefit.
This means that a dairy farmer in Northland pays much, much more for connection to the grid than a Southland farmer producing the same products with the same amount of electricity. It conveniently ignores the fact that three quarters of the population of New Zealand is in the North Island and therefore paid for at least this proportion of the massive costs of building our generation and transmission infrastructure in the first place.
Taking this economic puffery to its logical extreme we should be seeing city lines companies like Vector punishing those who are not living in the inner city by charging more for connections to their homes. Thank heavens for the Elected Trustee model that makes this kind of logic totally politically untenable.
While the Trust model provides a level of protection from purist economists, unelected energy officials aren’t as susceptible to the wrath of the voters.
Our government market regulator, the Commerce Commission, doesn’t even have an affordability or equity objective when addressing the electricity market. Instead, it’s ‘Right investments, Right Time at the right cost.’
What about doing ‘right’ by the rural communities generating enough food for 40 million people globally and generating exports in excess of $72 billion annually?
Sustainability
Electricity generated by gas fields, coal and oil fired power stations is expensive, carbon emitting and directly impacts the wholesale market price of electricity.
Over the past decade or so we have seen a steady decrease in their contribution to the country’s generation capacity as generators have switched off coal and gas fired capacity. A government ban on further oil and gas exploration and the rapid decline in our existing gas resources in and around Taranaki has placed even more pressure on our electricity supply.
The net result, as demand threatens to exceed supply, is that wholesale and forward prices are at record levels now and well into the future.
One answer to this supply issue might be Lake Onslow – pumped hydro – essentially a $17 billion, ten year project to deliver a giant hydro powered battery designed to help protect against hydro shortages.
Adding 1200 megawatts capacity (roughly an eighth of the country’s current peak capacity) would potentially help bring the volatile wholesale market for electricity back to some semblance of normality.
The Government has just made a decision to complete a $70 million business case on Lake Onslow. Add to that the $30 million they have already spent and it looks like this decision will be a major electricity industry inflexion point.
It’s difficult to see the GenTailers detaching themselves from the status quo and its associated super profits. As such it has been no surprise at all to see them aggressively highlight research from reports that paint the Onslow Project as an expensive and impractical idea.
What I have failed to see is any practical alternative being offered – other than the monopolists’ favourite – punishing vulnerable consumers into changing their behaviour by raising prices at peak time. This is not a great option when young consumers are juggling hungry children, bath times, winter heating bills and brutal mortgage interest rates, and dairy farmers have cattle lined up outside the sheds for milking.
Barring the embedded carbon costs of construction materials like steel and concrete, Onslow offers a sustainable opportunity to enhance the viability of inconsistent generation sources such as solar, wind and tidal generation. By providing a massive hydro based battery to store load as and when it is created, we could see wholesale prices back in the 8-12 cents per kw.
This would see the benefits of lower input costs flowing to farms, businesses and households instead of into the pockets of the gentailers and governments eager to feed off the dividends their super profits are providing.
- Part three of this series will address that most controversial of subjects – Water, Waste and Stormwater. Call it Three Waters if you like. I call it a right mess.
by Chris Hargreaves | Apr 5, 2023 | News, Panoramic Power
Ever had sky high utility bills at your investment or commercial property that you can’t explain? Or are you looking for an energy solution that provides an accurate breakdown of tenant consumption so that you can bill by usage rather than square metre?
Meet Panoramic Power!
It’s predictable, reliable, never sweeps costs under the carpet and hates waste. It’s always fair, makes everyone pay their way and works on facts rather than assumptions.
Total Utilities has been leveraging its power as part of its Total Tenant Metering Solution – to break down utility billing for clients to a granular level. It enables us to pinpoint any potential cost savings and sustainability gains through efficient power use, as well as detect any power faults or maintenance issues that could be costing you dearly in your common areas.
Panoramic Power, combined with our knowledge and expertise in analysing data, gives you the ability to manage your energy consumption right down to device level across your entire property.
It also enables you to avoid the inconvenience of regular visits from the meter reader! Whether you’re a landlord, property manager or tenant, this could be the perfect billing solution! Read on to get to know Panoramic Power better…
Panoramic Power
Occupation: Energy Insights tool – working as part of Total Utilities’ Tenant Metering Solution.
Relationships: In an exclusive relationship with Total Utilities as part of Centrica’s ‘Energy Insights’ package.
About Panoramic Power: A wireless sensor technology that transmits data from all your energy-using equipment and devices in real-time to a cloud-based analytics platform called PowerRadar. It can be used as part of Total Utilities’ tenant metering solution to give full visibility into your energy usage.
Designed for simple, quick, non-intrusive installation with minimal business disruption. Requires no maintenance and is a revolution in energy management.
Can provide detailed insights into how, why and where energy is being used within your property or common areas and where it’s being wasted.
Collects detailed utility usage information, enabling Total Utilities to analyse its data and help landlords bill tenants fairly based on individual consumption.
Not only enables property owners to charge residents fairly and accurately for the amount of energy consumed during a billing period, but also provides important feedback on energy consumption to encourage behavioural change.
Promotes energy conservation and savings.
Best qualities:
- Gifted in accurately measuring and collecting data.
- Great with numbers.
- Passion for measuring and conserving energy for a cleaner, greener planet.
- Extremely low maintenance.
- Always provides useful insights in real time.
- Hates inefficiencies and energy wastage.
- Enables landlords, property managers and tenants to save energy and money.
Bad habits: None. Excellent credit history. Likes to keep things clean and green.
Ready to meet?: If Panoramic Power sounds like your type of Energy Insights tool, contact Total Utilities and we can hook you up with our Total Tenant Metering Solution.
Keen to find out more before committing?: Panoramic Power and Centrica Energy Insights come with their own Total Utilities Centre of Energy Excellence Brochure. (Click here)
by Chris Hargreaves | Feb 28, 2023 | News, Waste
by David Spratt | Feb 23, 2023 | News, Planet Spratt
We have all watched with varying degrees of horror and sadness as first Auckland and then, a week later, the entire North Island suffered from catastrophic weather events and their aftermaths.
I can’t help but think we were warned about this over two decades ago and that these events are a shocking example of climate change writ large, with more to come.
‘Climate change, and specifically global warming, is not new. Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius posited that burning fossil fuels would add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere resulting in a ‘greenhouse effect’ (anthropogenic climate change) in an essay in 1896. ‘Global warming’ came into the public domain in a paper by Wallace Broecker published in the magazine Science in 1975. Source – John Walton Feb 18 2023
Critical infrastructure left wanting
My strategic hat tells me that this is a crisis for individuals and businesses that will rewrite the way we consider the basics such as reliability of power, water, food, sewerage systems, stormwater and fuel supplies.
The impact on communications is also significant. Our mobile phone and data networks rely on power to stay up. Battery backups are designed to maintain mobile transmission towers for a few hours until a service crew can arrive – not to keep systems up for days if not weeks without power.
This starts with our national grid and the local lines distribution network that delivers power directly to our homes and businesses. All these need to be designed and upgraded for greater resilience and higher availability. The issue here is that this costs a lot of money, time and resources.
For example, imagine that you are a lines company operator in a flood or storm damaged area like Hawke’s Bay or Northland. Your regional population is, say, thirty thousand people and you are faced with a bill of $100 million dollars to restore, repair and then bring your power systems up to the regulated standards of reliability and availability.
The cost to do this is $3,333 per head of population or roughly $10,000 per household.
Next, you are a water company in the same region whose filtration, pump and pipe infrastructure is also in poor shape. Water infrastructure funding is not my bulwark but it’s fair to say that $50 million would go some way to solving the problem in this example.
That’s another $1,666 per head or roughly $5,000 per household.
Crisis will rewrite the future
The problem will only get worse over time if the climate scientists and weather forecasters are to be believed. Just fixing the damage today might not solve the problem tomorrow.
Any city or town in New Zealand could find themselves staring down the barrel of rates increases, electricity lines charge increases and in many cases increases in water rates at a time where employment and economic growth are by no means guaranteed.
In the meantime the power goes out, the drains leak and our drinking water quality is questionable, while all the time our elected politicians local and central fiddle while Rome drowns.
Cyclone Gabriel is conservatively estimated to have cost the country $13 billion in repair costs alone.
If, as I believe, we can expect more and worsening climate destruction, we will have to build in some resilience to our infrastructure networks – and fast.
*Part two of this series addresses the after effects of Cyclone Gabrielle and will look at the options for more available and reliable power for businesses and the rural economy.
Sign up below for Total Utilities Market Commentary to receive all the latest market news and insights.
