Power sector keen to avoid election-year focus

Tue, 31 Dec 2019

Electricity retailers will be hoping recent low wholesale power prices persist into 2020 as the industry tries to avoid becoming a political football in election year.Eighteen months of sustained high prices came to an abrupt end late December as flooding in the lower South Island slashed electricity demand from irrigators and pushed national hydro storage to its highest level in more than 10 years. Gas supplies returned to more normal levels, and geothermal plants shut earlier in December for maintenance also returned to the market as demand s...

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