Reduced HVDC capacity and bipole outages in early 2020 will result in some price separation occurring between the North and South islands. This chart summarises the difference in prices between the North Island networks and Benmore in the South Island over the last three days.

2019 electricity demand reached a new record of 41.7 TWh. This demand was up 1.2 per cent on 2018 demand, although national demand has generally remained flat over the last decade. The 2019 increase was due to a 4.2 per cent increase in South Island demand. Tiwai load   contributed 1.2 per cent to the South Island load growth with the remainder of the increase coming from across the island, likely driven by increased irrigation load lifting summer demand over 2018 levels.   2018 experienced increased summer rainfall reducing electricity demand in irrigation regions. North Island demand remained relatively unchanged.

2019 saw strong ICP growth from Meridian (up 5.7%), Electric Kiwi (up 48%), and Nova (up 23%)   who acquired Hunet during the year. Mercury saw the largest losses (down 6.7%). Along with Hunet, three other retailers exited the market, while six others entered.   Collectively, the top five retailers serve 86% of connections down from 97% a decade ago.

Transpower is undertaking major work on the HVDC during January - April 2020. This work will result in reduced capacity and some bipole outages. This chart shows the flow (MW) over the last four weeks. More information on the outages is available on Transpower's website.

November inflows returned national storage to above-average historical levels. Northward flow across the HVDC has increased. Contributing to the increase in national storage, Taupo has increased to above-average levels during the last month after lingering at below-average levels since September 2018. Each update to the 2020 ERCs is presented in a public dashboard   on EMI. The official curves and more information on security of supply forecasting are available on the system operator's website.