The NZ Herald reports that after a good track record of building wind power and geothermal power plants over the past decade, construction of wind farms in NZ has ground to a halt - Politics take puff out of wind farm building. The report blames political uncertainty in spite of high court decisions in favour of wind farm developments.

The decade-long surge in big wind farm building in New Zealand is nearing an end with no new projects in the pipeline as the sector booms around the world. Industry leaders here are worried political uncertainty in the electricity market will stall further long-term development.

Wind farms account for more than 4 per cent of installed generation in New Zealand and the completion of the last big project, Meridian Energy's Mill Creek scheme near Wellington scheduled for next year, will boost this close to 5 per cent.

The partly privatised company accounts for about 61 per cent of the country's wind farms. Its chief financial officer Paul Chambers said although the economics of wind power were improving, there were no plans for more projects.

Flat electricity demand, due to reduced consumption by big industrial users and households, meant new generation wasn't needed in the near future but planning for renewable energy projects was hard hit by political and regulatory uncertainty.

Energy Matters has an update on Meridian's wind farms in Victoria - Mt. Mercer Wind Farm Starts Cranking Power.

On Tuesday, the first electricity was generated at the Mt Mercer Wind Farm near Ballarat in Victoria. The 64-turbine wind farm is being constructed by New Zealand's Meridian Energy. Mt Mercer will have a capacity of 131 MW, bringing the company's total operating portfolio in Australia to 201 MW. Mt Mercer, which will generate enough electricity for 74,000 average Australian homes (and enough to power the entire city of Ballarat), is the third wind farm project that Meridian has been involved with in Australia.

Meridian also owns and operates the 70MW Mt Millar wind farm; located approximately 100km south-west of Whyalla on the Eyre Peninsula of South Australia. The company was also involved with the 420 MW Macarthur Wind Farm in Western Victoria; but sold its stake earlier this year.

Tidal Power Today has a look at the slow steps towards harnessing tidal power in New Zealand - New Zealand to host tidal device testing.

It may seem one of the world’s most suitable locations for building a tidal power industry, but New Zealand looks like it also has a promising future as one of the world’s first major customers. An example of this is Crest Energy, a tidal company which in 2011 won planning permission for up to 200 MW at Kaipara harbour in the North Western peninsula of New Zealand’s North Island, which is taking a different course and will not be testing its own devices there.

Crest Energy, whose proposed project may well be the largest planned on the planet, has no tidal power prototypes of its own. Anthony Hopkins, managing director, says it will instead act as a developer, hosting companies with their own turbines and associated kit to produce electricity. ...

The company does have significant support from a major shareholder, the privately owned energy producer Todd Energy. Among the technology developers interested in New Zealand, perhaps not surprisingly, are the British, who could use various locations for product development and testing. A delegation from the UK arriving in April plans to consider such issues.

“I’m sure that some of the UK groups coming down will want to collaborate with New Zealand groups to develop and adapt prototypes to New Zealand conditions...the purpose of the mission is to link companies at the research and development level, where the research and development is advanced to a near-commercial level that can be exploited within a reasonable time-frame. ...

Other locally grown tidal companies are interested in developing their own projects or technology. These include Energy Pacifica, which has proposed a 30 MW project in the Tory Channel off the South Island, and Parnell Community Leisure Centre, which wants to power some community baths. Neptune Power is another company that wants to install tidal turbines in the Cook Straits (between the North and South island).

Tidal Today has a look at the state of play for tidal power projects in Australasia - Tidal projects make headway in Australia and New Zealand.

Overall, the investment climate for renewables, including tidal, is set to improve significantly and tidal resources are being investigated, mostly along Australia’s northern coastline.

Indeed, since the federal government announced its Clean Energy Future programme, a 48MW tidal project originally proposed eight years ago for the north west of Western Australia (WA) is now back on the agenda by Derby Hydro Power, while a number of other projects are also the horizon. These include three large-scale (24-300MW) tidal stream proposals by Tenax to be located at Clarence Strait, near Darwin in the Northern Territory (NT), Port Phillip Heads (Victoria), and Banks Strait (Tasmania).

The company is currently undertaking environmental impact assessments for the projects. The 200MW A$500m (£300m) NT project will use 1MW turbines, while the Port Phillip Heads Tidal Energy Project, if approved, will comprise up to 45 turbines, says Tenax.

Meantime, BioPower Systems is another Australian firm hoping the domestic industry takes off. It’s behind the Biostream tidal turbine, a unit it expects to be deployed for utility-scale power production in future. A pilot installation is located at Flinders Island, Tasmania. [The company is also developing tech for the wave energy sector, with its Biowave device now at pilot demonstration off the coast of Victoria, Australia.]

But, as the company’s CEO, Dr Timothy Finnigan, points out, to avoid causing significant disruption the electricity generated by tidal turbines must be grid-ready. As in the wind energy sector, this makes power conversion technologies a critical component to the tidal industry’s future.

“Ocean energy devices typically oscillate slowly in response to huge forces, and this presents a significant challenge in terms of harnessing the energy to produce electricity," he says. To overcome this obstacle, the company has been working on a suitable system since 2008, thanks in part to funding from the Australian commonwealth government’s Renewable Energy Development Initiative.

Last month, testing of the system – the O-Drive power conversion module – was completed, “successfully delivering stable power to the grid over extended periods with a high level of efficiency."

Developed in collaboration with Bosch Rexroth, CNC Design and Siemens, the self-contained 250kW module plugs into turbines like Biostream. It combines a hydraulic circuit, an electric generator, and complex control algorithms to convert the large forces, and slow motions, inherent to ocean waves and tides into a steady flow of electricity.

“We are pleased with the efficiency of this system, and with the quality of power that is produced," says Finnigan. “The O-Drive not only gears up the motion, but also rectifies it and smoothes it, so that we can produce grid-ready electricity using a standard electric generator."
O-Drive is also designed to be detached from a moored ocean energy system, enabling easy and cost-effective maintenance. Plus, as it also produces high-voltage power (keeping potential transmission losses to a minimum) it allows systems to be installed at substantial distances from shore.

“The system is self-regulating in variable wave or tidal conditions, such that power to the grid is stable and of utility-grade quality," says the firm, noting it is also suitable for use with offshore wind turbines.

Stuff.co.nz has a report on NZ's slow progress rolling out smart meters - Network Tasman eyes $20m plan for smart meters.

Network Tasman is considering whether to invest up to $20 million to fit out homes in the Nelson region with so-called smart meters as part of a joint venture with other electricity lines companies.

Chairman Ian Kearney confirmed Network Tasman was undertaking a feasibility study into joining SmartCo, a consortium of 14 lines companies which wants to spend $200m around the country putting in electronic meters equipped with Home Area Network (HAN) radios capable of wirelessly controlling and communicating with smart home appliances. ...

Current meters were based on 80-year-old technology and did not permit easy electricity management or load control, whereas new generation meters were far more efficient and were able to provide extra services, Mr Kearney said.

However, to label them smart was overstating their usefulness, he said. "Potentially there are a number of things an electronic meter will make easier but at this point of time we don't see there is any significant demand for people who want to hook refrigerators or washing machines or dishwashers to them because most of these devices have a built-in timing system anyway."

Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment Jan Wright criticised electricity retailers in a 2009 report for installing "dumb" smart meters that could relay half-hourly meter readings back to retailers, but which do not have home networking capabilities built in.

While the SmartCo initiative was "very encouraging" and would allow variable pricing, the fact electricity retailers had already started installing meters without HAN radios created "a mess", she said.

More than 614,000 "advanced meters" capable of sending half-hourly meter readings back to retailers have been installed on behalf of companies, including Genesis Energy and Mercury Energy.

Energy Efficiency News has a post on a tidal power project in Scotland - Scottish Government gives go ahead to world’s largest tidal power project.

The Scottish Government has given the go ahead to what will be the world’s largest tidal stream energy array to date in the Sound of Islay.

The £40 million ScottishPower Renewables development of underwater turbines will have a capacity of 10 MW, generating enough electricity to power around 5000 homes and eight local distilleries and maltings.

“With around a quarter of Europe’s potential tidal energy resource and a tenth of the wave capacity, Scotland’s seas have unrivalled potential to generate green energy, create new, low carbon jobs, and bring billions of pounds of investment,” commented Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Sustainable Growth John Swinney in a statement yesterday.

He said that ScottishPower Renewables, which is owned by Spanish power giant Iberdrola Renovables, will work with the Islay Energy Trust to maximise local social and economic benefits.

Local Scottish businesses are also set to benefit, with £4 million in contracts to make the turbines, with a test prototype being manufactured at Burntisland Fabrication’s (BiFab) facility in Arnish.

BiFab has a £2 million contract to build turbines for the ten 1 MW HS1000 devices to be used in the Islay project, which are being developed by Hammerfest Strøm, a joint venture between Scottish Power Renewables and Norwegian energy companies.

A prototype of the HS1000 device has been generating electricity in Norwegian waters for six years and the company is currently constructing the first commercial-scale device for testing in Scottish waters off Orkney later in the year.

Scotland is one of the leaders in tidal development, with world’s first commercial wave and tidal leasing round already underway for the Pentland Firth, which could ultimately produce some 1600 MW of marine energy.

“[The] announcement moves the whole marine renewables industry forward in Scotland and the UK,” says Keith Anderson, chief executive of ScottishPower Renewables. “The understanding we develop from Islay will be essential in delivering the larger planned projects in the Pentland Firth.”

The testing of the HS1000 later this year in Orkney will determine the rollout of the devices in Islay, but ScottishPower Renewables expects to start work on the project next year and start installation between 2013 and 2015.

New Zealand is also looking to develop some large scale tidal power - Kaipara tide turbine plan gets Govt green light.

A $600 million proposal to create New Zealand's first tide-driven power station in the Kaipara Harbour has been approved by Government despite concerns it could kill off fish stocks and threaten critically endangered Maui dolphin.

Conservation Minister Kate Wilkinson this morning signed off the staged installation of 200 tidal turbines near the mouth of the harbour by Crest Energy.

Local fisherman, Te Uri O Hau Settlement Trust and the Department of Conservation had opposed the plan, arguing it could reduce west coast snapper stocks, threaten the environment of the pristine harbour and impact Maui dolphin numbers.

But Ms Wilkinson backed an Environment Court ruling approving the station on the condition it started with only three turbines and conducted two years of environmental monitoring.

If fully implemented, it is estimated the development could generate enough electricity to power the area from Auckland's North Shore to Cape Reinga, she said.

The NZ Herald has an article on the slow progress of a tidal power project in NZ - Tidal power station for Kaipara approved.

More than half a billion dollars will be spent on sinking tidal power turbines to the seabed of the Kaipara Harbour after the approval of New Zealand's first tide-driven power station.

But the Environment Court has set conditions of consent for the project after a year of mediation among four objectors.

The key requirement for applicant Crest Energy is two years of environmental monitoring and evaluation and starting with only three turbines.

The company wants to sink up to 200 turbines off the harbour mouth in a $600 million plan to harness the swift tidal flow to power homes from Albany to Cape Reinga.

It appealed to the court in 2008 when Northland Regional Council allowed only 100 turbines to be sunk.

Clint Smith from the Economics and Industry research team at the New Zealand Parliamentary Library has produced a report on peak oil and the implications for New Zealand - The Next oil Shock ?.

New Zealand’s annual oil production in 2008 and 2009 was 55,000 barrels per day. Consumption was 148,000 barrels per day. Proven reserves total 189 million barrels.

There are thought to be potentially large, unfound oil reserves. A 2009 study by the Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences estimates that there is a 90 percent chance that reserves totalling 1.9 billion barrels of oil remain in New Zealand and a 50 percent chance there are 6.5 billion barrels. Most of these estimated undiscovered reserves are in difficult to access deposits under deep water in the Great South Basin and the Deepwater Taranaki basin.

New Zealand’s geographical position is a serious challenge to increasing oil production. A report by Lincoln University’s Centre for Land, Environment and People (LEaP) states:

“New Zealand’s isolation from the rest of the world acts as a major constraint in the attraction of international explorers. Exploration and mining companies operating in New Zealand have to bear the cost of getting equipment to and from New Zealand as well as shipping crude oil to international refineries.”

In addition to petroleum oil reserves, New Zealand has a vast resource of lignite coal, which can be converted into petroleum products. Solid Energy and several other companies are proposing lignite to liquids plants or underground coal gasification projects to create oil products. However, the IEA estimates lignite to liquids production costs are US$60-$110 per barrel, so high oil prices are needed to make lignite to liquids viable.

If New Zealand can increase its oil production, it could be a major economic boon in the long-run. The Ministry of Economic Development projects oil exports to reach $30 billion per annum by 2025. However, becoming self-sufficient would require a massive increase in New Zealand’s oil production and refining capacity, and, as with any region, New Zealand would not be able to sustain high production rates as reserves were depleted.

No large-scale coal to liquids projects or commercial production wells of, as yet undiscovered, conventional oil reserves are planned to come online within the next five years.

In the medium term, New Zealand will remain heavily dependent on imported oil. Domestic production at any level cannot insulate New Zealand from global short-falls or price rises. New Zealand pays the world price for oil, whether that oil is produced domestically or not because oil producers will not sell their product in New Zealand if they can get a higher price overseas.

New Zealand would be affected by oil supply crunches both directly and indirectly via the effect on trading partners.

Direct effects include higher transport costs and an increased balance of payments deficit due to the increased cost of importing oil. Transport costs constitute a significant expense for exporters, especially exporters of bulk goods like timber, meat, and dairy.

Indirect effects would be felt through lower consumer demand in the markets for New Zealand’s export goods, leading to lower prices.

The LEaP report cited above details the economic consequences of oil shocks on the $9 billion a year international tourism industry, which it states is “highly dependent on affordable oil”:

* “Tourism Businesses: face an increase in their operating costs due to higher oil prices and reduced demand in response to oil shocks and price increases.

* Destinations and communities: face reduced visitation resulting in compromised regional development.

* Tourists: reduced experience due to higher proportion of holiday budget being spent on transportation.

* Government: reduced income from tourism as a result of reduced arrivals and reduced expenditure by tourists.”

As a country that is reliant on oil imports and heavily dependent on cheap oil for its major sources of income, New Zealand is highly exposed to oil shocks. Domestic oil production is insufficient to meet New Zealand’s oil needs. Equally, increasing domestic oil production would not protect New Zealand from either the direct or indirect effects of price spikes caused by global supply crunches.

The Otago Daily Times reports geothermal power generation in New Zealand continues to expand - Generation from geothermal sources hits historical high.

More electricity was generated from geothermal sources in the three months to June than at any other time in New Zealand's history, Economic Development Ministry figures reveal.

The New Zealand Energy Quarterly shows 10,831GWh was generated from all sources over the period, about the same as during the corresponding period last year, but that geothermal generation increased by 23%.

The new Nga Awa Purua geothermal plant opened in May, helping the geothermal sector generate more than 1400GWh, or 13% of the country's total electricity output.

Releasing the report yesterday, Energy Minister Gerry Brownlee said geothermal generation was a significant source of electricity and, with a number of new geothermal projects in the pipeline, its influence would continue to grow.

Coal generation dropped 60%, and greenhouse-gas emissions dropped to their lowest level since the June 2000 quarter, as hydro, wind and gas generation increased.

Renewable generation accounted for 73% of the country's electricity generation, the seventh quarter in a row that production exceeded 70%.

Hydro accounted for 55%.

Geothermal production rose as coal production dropped.

The NZ Herald has an article looking at progress building a smarter grid in New Zealand - Efficiency at the flick of a switch.

Smart grids are electricity's buzzword, but, with the odd cold shower, we've felt their effects in our homes for decades.

The forerunner of energy's big hope was pioneered in New Zealand 60 years ago when ripple control was introduced to give power suppliers the ability to cut hot water heating when demand stretched generation and transmission. This relatively crude, but "sensible grid" way of avoiding blackouts or brownouts, having to build more power stations and sling more lines to meet peak demand is still around today.

Though smart grid innovators and enthusiasts are bursting with ways to refine and expand the principle, a one-way pulse that turns off your hot water will remain the mainstay of controlling demand for a while yet.

It may be decades before most New Zealanders' appliances are having a two-way conversation through smart grids, whose definitions are almost as numerous as potential applications.

At its most basic it involves better communication between utility operators and components of the grid, including transformers, power lines, meters and even home appliances. Your fridge could turn itself on and off to take advantage of cheap power rates, or your solar panel or micro-windmill could feed surplus electricity back into the national grid - and the homeowner gets paid for it. On top of those alluring prospects, New Zealand's 1.7 million residential electricity consumers could adjust their use to prevent and ease peak power loads. Trials by Mercury Energy show householders who use up-to-the-minute data can cut their use by 10 per cent.

Across the country such savings could at least delay the need to build power stations and the associated infrastructure. Allowing for future spending on power stations is inflicting growing pain - by Contact Energy's reckoning it will push the energy component of bills from around 7c to between 10c and 12c a unit for all consumers over coming years.

Reliability of networks will also improve. Transmission lines and cables will be constantly monitored for signs of distress; already the health of critical lines is monitored as regularly as every half a metre.

Around the world tens of billions of dollars is being poured into building smart grids. In the United States - where networks are in worse shape than here - about $2.1 trillion must be spent on interstate grids.

The Obama administration is investing $4.5 billion in 100 smart grid projects, to be matched dollar for dollar by private funding by utilities.

Last month General Electric launched a 10-week contest to speed global power-grid upgrades, promising investment and marketing help for the best submissions from a $260 million fund.

The company estimates there is a $260 billion market for smart-grid technologies in the next decade. GE is spending about $10 billion on environmentally friendly products by 2015.

China is also at the forefront of the smart grid push and is now drafting a five-year energy plan to include smart grid technology as one of the key industries for research and development.

Its government will provide funding to build several research centres this year to develop transmission technology connecting wind and solar power to the grid.

State Grid Corp will invest the equivalent of $50 billion this year to build a smart grid network in China, Xinhua news agency reports. The company aims to install 75 electric car-charging stations and 6209 recharging towers across 27 cities this year, according to previous reports.

In Europe, an EU directive requires that 80 per cent of member state households be equipped with smart meters by the year 2020.

In Australia, Newcastle, will become the first Australian city to move towards being on a smart grid after a $120 million initial investment by the federal government announced in June. Parts of Sydney are also included in the trial project.

So what about New Zealand? The phrase "smart grid" barely rates a mention in the draft energy strategy released last month.

AFP has a report on geothermal energy potential in Japan - Japan could be geothermal energy leader: US expert.

A prominent US environmentalist said Wednesday Japan should focus on developing geothermal energy, saying the volcanic island-nation could become the global leader in the field.

"Japan could make geothermal energy the centre of its new energy economy just as the US or China will make wind the centre of theirs," Lester Brown, president of the US-based Earth Policy Institute, told a news conference.

"There are no leaders in the world today in this field. There is no industrial country in the world that now has a well established geothermal industry" Brown said at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan.

Japan, located at the crossroads of four tectonic plates and on what is known as the "Pacific Ring of Fire" and dotted with volcanoes, is one of the world's most quake-prone countries.

If Japan can launch full development of geothermal energy technology, "it would not only lower carbon emissions in Japan, but it would also give Japanese industry the potential for playing a leading role in developing the world's geothermal energy resources." he said.

Brown noted that demand for the technology will grow in other geothermal-rich countries located on tectonic faultlines such as Indonesia and the Philippines in Asia as well as Chile, Peru and Colombia in South America.

"This is an opportunity for Japan to move to the centre stage in an area where it is richly endowed," he added.

Japan makes use of hot springs as a resource for tourism, but geothermal energy only accounts for 0.3 percent of its energy mix, and the country relies heavily on imports of oil and other resources.

Kiwis (and Icelanders) might find Lester's claim that no industrial country has an established geothermal industry a bit insulting. The NZ Herald has a report on their latest power station to open - Geothermal power station opens early.

Contact Energy's $100 million geothermal power station Tauhara One, near Taupo, has been finished three weeks ahead of schedule.

Contact managing director David Baldwin today said the 23-megawatt (MW) station, which would provide enough baseload renewable energy for about 23,000 homes, was also finished under budget. ...

Contact is seeking consents for a 250MW Tauhara Two geothermal power station through a board of inquiry process and advancing development of its consented 220MW Te Mihi power station.

TVNA has a report on a new geothermal power station in New Zealand - World's largest geothermal turbine in NZ.

The largest geothermal turbine in the world has been constructed just north of Taupo at a new power station which runs renewable energy. The power station has diminished the threat of power cuts, especially at a time when New Zealand is facing a dry winter.

Mighty River Power spokesman Doug Heffernan says compared to other renewable energies, the power continues to flow in the dark, when it is dry and however the wind blows.

The energy stripped out of the geothermal turbine will power around 140,000 homes. That is about 3% of all the power the country needs.

But the new turbine is unlikely to bring down power prices. "These things don't come cheaply. This cost about $430 million to build and to keep doing that, we need to generate the revenue to pay for it," says Heffernan.

Inc has an article on New Zealand based distributed manufacturing company Ponoko - The Future of Manufacturing.

It's easy to mistake the laser cutter that sits in the Ponoko headquarters for an ordinary office appliance.

The machine stands roughly 3 feet tall -- about the size and shape of a copy machine -- and is encased by that dun-colored plastic that is so familiar in the modern workplace.

"It's basically a big-ass printer," says Ponoko's CEO, David ten Have. "But it gives you an idea of where things are headed."

The laser cutter looks sort of like a printer because it is, in fact, a sort of printer. Instead of arranging ink on paper, the machine carves materials using a highly concentrated beam of light that is controlled by a computer. Lift the lid, insert a flat piece of wood or plastic, and in 15 minutes or so, you have the parts for a tabletop, a lampshade, or a toy car.

For ten Have -- a small, serious man of 34 with close-cropped dark hair that is flecked with silver -- this is only the beginning. One day, he believes, perhaps 50 years from now, machines like this will be inexpensive enough to be in every home and will be capable of making almost anything. Buying a physical product -- a cell phone, for instance -- will be as easy as buying an MP3 on iTunes. Products won't be shipped in containers; they will be downloaded as digital design files and then printed on our desks while we sip our morning coffee. Not only will this be exceedingly convenient, but ten Have says that it will reorder the global economy, green the planet, and unleash an unprecedented wave of creativity as regular people design their own stuff.

This is the wild, abstract future -- fodder, perhaps, for keynote speeches and think tank prognostications but not the sort of thing you would expect to quickly turn into a profitable business. Yet ten Have is building such a business. Ponoko is piecing together an infrastructure for this new kind of supply chain, beginning with the laser cutter that sits a few feet from his office in Wellington, New Zealand. It's July; the weather is sweltering in the United States, but in New Zealand, where the seasons are backward and buildings aren't equipped with insulation, you feel the winter wind indoors. Ten Have is standing over a space heater in a small, damp room attempting to explain what this machine has to do with the future of manufacturing. "We're trying to take Made in China and smear it across the globe," he says. "We're designing a factory for the 21st century."

Todd Woody has an article at Grist talking about the benefits of expanding the smart meter / smart grid idea from the electricity grid to the water supply network - Smart meters save energy, water, and dollars.

The other day I came home to find a colorful flyer on my front door proclaiming, “Your meter just got smarter.”

While I was out and about in Berkeley, a worker from my utility, PG&E, slipped in the side gate and gave my old gas and electric meter a digital upgrade. So-called smart meters allow the two-way transmission of electricity data and will eventually let me monitor and alter my energy consumption in near real-time. I’ll be able to fire up an app on my iPhone and see, for instance, a spike in watts because my son has left the lights on in his room and a laptop plugged in.

Now I only learn of my electricity use when I get my monthly utility bill, long after all that carbon has escaped into the atmosphere. The situation is even worse when it comes to water consumption; my bill and details of my water use arrive every other month.

“When you tell people what total bucket of water they used in the past 60 days, the barn door is open and the animals are long gone,” says Richard Harris, water conservation manager for the East Bay Municipal Utility District, my local water agency.

EBMUD is currently testing smart water meters in 30 households and plans to expand the pilot program to 4,000 homes and businesses later this year.

“It’ll give us better knowledge of where our water is going,” says Harris. “We also thought if we’re going to ask people to use water more efficiently, especially when we’re coming out of a drought and have imposed water restrictions, customers need to have an idea of what their current use is.”

EBMUD’s smart meters take readings every hour and participants in the pilot program will be able to go online to check their consumption and set up an email alert if their water use rises above a certain level. The agency also plans to offer a social networking feature to allow people to compare their water consumption with other households in the area. Nothing like a little peer pressure to get you to turn off the tap.

Given that many states expect to face water shortages in the coming years, one would think we’d be seeing a roll out of smart water meters akin to the national effort being made to smarten up the power grid.

The payoff could be enormous. Water agencies and consumers would be able to detect leaking pipes and toilets in real-time and fix the problem before the water literally goes down the drain.

Smart grids continue to be the one area of the cleantech world that is really booming this year, so I'll do a little roundup of recent articles.

EETimes points to a recent report predicting their will be over 200 million smart meters deployed by 2014 - Report: Smart meters rise to 212 million in 2014.

Deployments of smart electricity meters worldwide will rise from 76 million in 2009 to reach about 212 million in 2014, according to a new report from ABI Research. The report provides forecasts of the wired and wireless communications options used to connect meters as well as profiles of some of many smart meter makers.

The move to smart grids and two-way meters to enable new services to the home got a $3.4 billion boost from economic stimulus grants in the U.S. this year, noted Sam Lucero, a practice director at ABI and author of the report.

For its part, the European Union enacted a so-called Third Energy Package in September which aims to migrate every European electricity meter to a capability for two-way communications by 2022. China is said to be ramping up its own smart grid programs, Lucero added.

Smart Grid News has a look at some possible changes to the energy market configurations as a result of smart grid implementation - Why Today's Utilities May Soon Be Obsolete (and What May Replace Them).

The potential for implementation of a Smart Grid depends upon the paradigm or paradigms that are eventually implemented, as well as on the quantity and quality of information being exchanged. ... Two major questions are paramount across all models:

* Who makes the decisions?
* How is control exercised?

These crucial questions determine who applies the smarts to the grid and how efficiently those smarts realize the promise of Smart Grid technologies.

Attempting to create a taxonomy of market structures risks over-simplification, but the resulting clarity can be insightful. This said, I argue that there are four market models that capture the critical elements of what will emerge when the Smart Grid is fully implemented. While elements of the four can be mixed and matched, at the core they represent extremes that require dramatically different deployment strategies in information and data flow, as well as end user decision and control.

These are:

* Pure Market
* Intermediated
* Microgrid
* Centrally Controlled

Reuters has a look at the smart grid investment landscape - How to make a play in the smart electrical grid: executives.

The privately-held Silver Spring Networks is smart grid networking company and is often cited as a candidate for an initial public offering.

The smart grid will allow two-way communications between utilities and their customers. Analysts have said it will marry clean power, electric vehicles, advanced meters, and power storage into a seamless network, modernizing thousands of miles of outdated power lines and allowing for more efficient energy use.

Increased momentum for smart grid technology helped push power storage and energy efficiency stocks to perform the best on the WilderHill New Energy Global Innovation Index in 2009, which tracks the performance of 86 global clean energy stocks.

The sector also has seen a boost from the Obama administration, which announced a $3.4 billion package in 2009 to help build a smart electric grid meant to trim utility bills, reduce blackouts and carry power generated by solar and wind energy.

"The scale is even bigger than the Internet ... but the speed of adoption is still going to be slow," said Adrian Tuck, chief executive at Tendril, a Boulder, Colorado-based smart grid company that GE recently acquired a stake in. ...

"Demand response is the killer application in this market, at least the first killer app," said Robert W Baird analyst Michael Horowitz. "These guys already have built fairly good business momentum over the last couple of years, as consumers and utilities alike are looking for better ways to manage delivering electrons," he added.

While bigger players are moving into the sector, they may not be the fastest way to profit from the smart grid. Google has invested in smart grid player Silver Spring Networks while Cisco and Microsoft are seeking to leverage their existing networking and software expertise in the emerging sector.

"Our view is the pure play companies are going to give a lot more bang. This is going to be very small to incremental for a company like Cisco and Microsoft," said RBC Capital Markets analyst Stuart Bush.

Back at Smart grid News, a look at some of the issues that are cropping up as utilities try to phase out jobs like meter reading as smart meters are rolled out - Is the Smart Grid Inducing Labor Pains?.

It seems that there is a bit of wire crossing happening amid the hardworking folks who are actually many of the hands and feet creating and managing the Smart Grid. In spite of very positive initial reactions to the federal investment of billions into the creation of the Smart Grid, the law of unintended consequences is introducing some consternation among the ranks of organized labor as Smart Grid programs move from philosophy to reality.

While the introduction of the Smart Grid Investment Grant (SGIG) program was applauded by many in the labor community as the beginnings of a new market for skilled technicians, such as in this AFL-CIO blog post, or this IBEW promotional video, some actual deployments are not being greeted as positive changes.

Most recently, on Jan. 19 the Kennebec Journal reported that IBEW Local 1837 was "speaking out against" a new smart meter installation project by Central Maine Power (CMP) that had been funded to the tune of $96M through the SGIG, and which had a total cost of roughly $190M. Seems that the project would likely eliminate, over time, some 141 positions, and that did not sit well with the union.

The tension at CMP, however, is not unique. In October, a plan by the board of Memphis Light, Gas and Water Division (MLGW) received similar criticism from the IBEW, which noted that roughly 400 meter reading jobs would be lost in that plan.

The Smart Grid is comprised of much more than just smart metering. It involves redundancy, and resiliency, and quality of power, and ease of integrating renewables, and storage, and on and on and on. Today's unfortunate reality, however, is that investment has been increasingly targeted to smart metering. Smart meters, and the improvements in automating, and "remotifying" the reading, turn-on, and cut-off of power, are seen as early wins. They do not appear to jeopardize the delivery of power, and can very quickly demonstrate cost efficiency by decreasing truck rolls. This is both a reaction to the government's emphasis of "shovel-ready" projects to fund, and to the ease with which a utility can justify the project to regulators as a cost-saver, paying off the capital cost in short order through a reduction in labor costs. As a result, the union teams, originally anxious to generate skilled labor to drive the construction of the next generation of transmission and distribution, is left, instead with a short-term need for installers that will be wiring up the elimination of hundreds of jobs for their meter reading brethren.

Greentech media has a look at the top 10 smart grid news stories from 2009 - The Past and Future of Smart Grid.

8. Distribution and Transmission Up Next: Not all smart grid systems are visible to the untrained eye. Upgrading distribution and transmission grids with communications and controls could help utilities squeeze up to 10 percent more efficiency out of their existing generation capacity, according to the Electric Power Research Institute. Those savings can come from preventative maintenance and replacement, shortening outage times, and optimizing grid voltages, among other sources.

At the same time, managing the massive growth in renewable solar, wind and geothermal energy that will be needed to cut the nation's carbon emissions will put new pressures on the grid. Hundreds of billions of dollars will need to be spent on new transmission lines to carry Midwest wind power and Southwest solar power to load centers, according to studies - which opens up new business models for startups.

And at the neighborhood level, distribution grids will need a whole host of new technologies to manage the increase in rooftop solar panels, demand response-enabled homes, and future plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles that will soon place unprecedented new pressures on utilities built on the model of delivering power from central generation stations to millions of customers.

9. Smart Grid 2.0: All of these emerging smart grid technologies will be a lot more useful if they can be linked together. That's the idea for the next surge in the industry – a whole ecosystem of smart architectures, stretching from generations sources and transmission lines to the wireless and wired networks in utility customers' homes and businesses.

GridPoint, one of the more prominent – and well-funded – of the smart grid startups out there, is centered on delivering this kind of integrated offering to utility customers. Its approach has included buying up a host of startups offering vehicle charging, home energy monitoring and industrial and commercial energy management, indicating the breadth of functions it hopes to provide.

What will the smart grid of the future look like? Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers speaks of a utility-managed system that orchestrates smart meters, solar panels, batteries, demand response systems and plug-in vehicle chargers to serve as "virtual power plants" scattered throughout a utility service territory.

CNet has an article on a in-house energy usage display that is combined with a thermostat (I suspect we'll see a trend for convergence in home based control devices over time which mirrors that of hand held devices) - CES: To save energy, thermostat becomes mini computer.

There are dozens of companies making in-home displays designed to help consumers shave energy use at home. But SilverPac is packing many of those features into a high-tech thermostat. SilverPac, which makes digital picture frames and other media electronics, on Monday introduced the SilverStat 7, a sleek device that combines the heating and cooling controls of a programmable thermostat with a real-time energy display. ...

The thermostat is built around a 7-inch touch-screen display that runs Windows CE on Intel's Atom processor. It has a Wi-Fi interface that will allow it to get electricity usage information from smart meters and talk to network-aware appliances on a home wireless network. It has built-in speakers to play FM radio or music streamed from a home network. People can also use the device as a calendar.

According to the company, SilverPac's in-home energy display will rely on getting information from a smart meter, which means that it won't be accessible to everyone. Even with millions of smart meters expected to be installed over the next three years, many utilities will not be making meter information available over home wireless networks, in part because of security concerns.

Smart meter programs in Australia are still in their infancy - Western Australia recently announced the first step in a local smart meter rollout - IBM nabs WA smart meter deal .

RESIDENTS in parts of Western Australia will soon be able to tell exactly how much power each electrical appliance consumes.

Western Power hopes to roll out 10,500 smart meters as part of its smart grid project, aimed at helping customers identify consumption patterns. As a result, households and businesses could lower their power bills as smart meters make usage monitoring more transparent.

IBM bagged a key contract with energy supplier Western Power to provide systems integration and project management services for the smart grid trial, due for completion in June 2012. ...

IBM is involved in almost 50 smart grid projects worldwide, including local utilities Energy Australia and Country Energy.

The federal government has pledged up to $100m towards the nation's first national smart grid. A government-backed smart infrastructure conference, ThinkFuture, will be held at Parliament House in Canberra on March 12.

SmartMeters.com has an article on some turbulence being encountered by a smart meter rollout in New Zealand - Second thoughts about smart meters in New Zealand.

A question has been raised in New Zealand whether the primary motivation for smart meter installations is so power companies can recoup funds from customers where were undercharged previously.

Three major utilities – Contact, Genesis, & Meridian – are all installing smart meters throughout New Zealand claiming the devices will conserve energy and save money for customers. The devices allow for remote meter reads so human meter readers don’t have to be sent out. The smart meters also use information technology to record and display power usage.

The New York Times has a look at consumer unhappiness with smart meter rollouts in the US as well - ‘Smart’ Electric Utility Meters, Intended to Create Savings, Instead Prompt Revolt.

Millions of households across America are taking a first step into the world of the “smart grid,” as their power companies install meters that can tell them how much electricity they are using hour by hour — and sometimes, appliance by appliance. But not everyone is happy about it. Leo Margosian of Fresno, Calif., said his meter put July use at three times as much as last July's.

Customers in California are in open revolt, and officials in Connecticut and Texas are questioning whether the rush to install meters benefits the public.

Some consumers argue that the meters are logging far more kilowatt hours than they believe they are using. And many find it unfair that they will begin to pay immediately for the new meters through higher rates, when the promised savings could be years away.

Power companies say the meters will allow utilities to vary the price charged to their customers by the hour to correspond to what those utilities are paying for energy in the wholesale market. This can help consumers save money, they say.

They also say the meters will be crucial to remaking the electric system to handle intermittent power sources like wind turbines and solar cells while continuously meeting customers’ needs. ...

In response to a wave of complaints from the Bakersfield area in the Central Valley, Pacific Gas & Electric has been placing full-page advertisements in newspapers in the area promising benefits from the new meters. It says customers will save money not only by paying rates based on hourly fluctuations in the wholesale market, but also eventually by displaying real-time rates.

To reduce their bills, customers could cut back at pricey peak times and shift some activities, like running a clothes dryer or a vacuum cleaner, to off-peak periods. Utilities will then have lower costs, the argument goes, because the grid will need fewer power plants as demand levels out.

Customers will become “structural winners,” said Andy Tang, senior director of the company’s Smart Energy Web program.

Someday utilities hope to use the meter to control consumption by major appliances like air conditioners. But experts are still debating what technical standards the meters and appliances should use to communicate.

The Energy Collective has an article on the need to educate consumers about the long term benefit of smart meter rollouts (though I think the fact that some smart meters just aren't that smart, or they help utilities adopt a utility centric model rather than a customer centric one - like the horrible example above of utilities controlling customer air conditioners rather than customers configuring their own response to high power prices, needs to be addressed - many of these programs are far from perfect) - Connecting the Smart Grid Dots One Meter at a Time.

There are more signs that the brouhaha over PG&E’s smart meter rollout may do damage to other utilities’ plans for similar deployments. News reports indicate that utilities and regulatory agencies in other states are closely watching the legal tangle devolve in California. Consumer advocacy groups in California are concerned that smart meters are expensive, inaccurate and increase their bills, and only benefit utilities by eliminating meter reading jobs. This clearly demonstrates that they and the consumers they represent see the immediate impacts of the rollout of smart meters – a highly visible and disruptive new technology – as negatives. To them, the smart meter is an unwelcome revolutionary technology with no benefits to average ratepayers. They don’t know about its evolutionary role in the Smart Grid and how it will help ratepayers save money AND the environment.

And why should they? It’s the responsibility of utilities, and maybe the Department of Energy (DOE) as well to educate consumers better about what Smart Grid technologies can do today and in the future. The DOE has developed a series of booklets that explain the benefits of the Smart Grid to various groups, including consumers, but clearly there need to be much more aggressive and coordinated campaigns to enlighten consumers.

Does Joe Ratepayer understand that smart meters enrolled in utility programs will reduce or eliminate the need to build more power plants to address peak electricity load requirements? Does Jane Ratepayer understand that new power plant construction translates into higher electricity bills to recover costs? Could Joe or Jane intuitively understand how a smart meter saves them money and saves the environment too?

Those of us in the business understand that smart meters will save consumers money on their utility bills as the grid evolves to residential Time of Use (TOU) electricity rates and Home Energy Management Systems (HEMS) are deployed. (Note: The Smart Grid Dictionary defines TOU as “A rate structure with different unit prices for electricity use in a 24-hour timeframe, generally to encourage use during periods of lower demand. This price applies to a time-of-use price, rate, or tariff and is a dynamic price scheme typically used with non-dispatchable demand response programs. It is also known as time-of-day pricing.”)

Analogies can help explain the Smart Grid rollout process and the role that smart meters play. For instance, let’s say that I am building a new house with the kitchen of my dreams. I won’t get the benefits of that kitchen’s output until foundations to fixtures are installed.

The smart meter is like my house’s foundation. There’s no home without a foundation. There’s no Smart Grid without smart meters. In building my new home, I understand that there is a start and a finish to the project. I have a blueprint to visualize the goal. I have a project plan to understand the process of achieving that goal.

It is vital for utilities to connect the dots between current smart meter rollout activities and long term Smart Grid objectives. Ratepayers and consumer advocacy groups need equivalent blueprints and project plans to understand the long-term objectives in terms of what it means to their bills and the environment.

The New York Times also has a look at experiments investigating the psychology of electricity consumption - Will 'Smart' Electric Meters Lead to Smarter Consumers ?.

In conjunction with utilities, tech companies and state and federal agencies, Stanford University is doing a number of experiments to see how psychology affects people's energy consumption.

Researchers say that when it comes to demand-side management, the field of psychology has been lying fallow for far too long, particularly in the residential sector.

"California has huge amounts of money to put toward marketing campaigns, and they spend it all on media marketing campaigns that we know don't work," said Carrie Armel, a research associate at Stanford University's Precourt Institute for Energy Efficiency. "Tens, hundreds of billions of dollars are going to be spent on installing smart meter technology. How much is being spent on behavioral research? Nothing. That's mind-blowing."

Economists and policymakers have long advocated real-time pricing as a way to reduce consumption and smooth demand at peak times. California's 2001 energy crisis might have been avoided had customers had a direct incentive to conserve power; the state Public Utilities Commission has experimented with at least three different pricing mechanisms since 2003, and is currently aiming to install smart meters in the majority of consumers' homes by 2011.

Stanford researchers are working on a dozen different studies on how behavioral patterns can create barriers to adopting new technologies and practices. The projects target four categories -- policy, technology, community and media -- with the aim of creating tools to tap into people's natural proclivities.

The National Business review has an article on the expanding geothermal power industry in New Zealand - Mighty River Power tests $430m geothermal project, lodges consent for another.

Mighty River Power is a step closer to completing its $430 million Nga Awa Purua geothermal power station and has lodged consents for another $400 million geothermal station at Ngatamariki, near Taupo.

The state-owned company said testing at Nga Awa Purua was conducted over the weekend and electricity was added to the national grid.

The 132 MW station north east of Taupo, is a joint venture between Mighty River and the Tauhara North No. 2 Trust and is a welcome new addition to electricity reliability to the peak North Island, the company said.

Maximum output, expected in April, will provide power to 130,000 homes – or the equivalent of every home in Hamilton, Tauranga, Rotorua and Taupo. Until then, testing will continue, with electricity added to the grid in stages.

The planned station at Ngatamariki, 17 kilometres north east of Taupo, is also in partnership with the trust.

Mighty River Power chief executive Doug Heffernan said it had been fortunate to develop a cooperative business model with Maori Land Trust partners, including Tauhara North No. 2 Trust, that enabled such projects to be feasible, given the significant capital investment needed.

“At $430 million for Nga Awa Purua; $300 million for Kawerau; and at least $400 million for Ngatamariki, its easy to see how we are nearing the end of our initial $1.2 billion geothermal investment programme,” he said.

“These are great projects that are providing a secure source of renewable electricity to help power the New Zealand economy.”

The Otago Daily Times has an article on a tidal power project proposed for Dunedin's harbour - Otago Harbour tidal power idea gets boost.

There are renewed calls for Dunedin to consider investing in tidal power generation in Otago Harbour, stimulated by progress towards a $600 million scheme north of Auckland.

Auckland-based power company Crest Energy is seeking consent for a 200-turbine, 200-megawatt scheme, costing about $600 million, at the entrance to Kaipara Harbour. The scheme would be the first of its kind in New Zealand, and could power 250,000 homes.

The Environment Court has given a positive recommendation to Conservation Minister Tim Groser, while requesting work to address lingering environmental concerns.

The progress encourages David Tucker, of Dunedin, who argues a similar scheme should be considered for Otago Harbour. Mr Tucker, a semi-retired consultative engineer and former Dunedin City Council consultant, said Otago Harbour could be as effective as a source of renewable energy.

He envisaged turbines on the sea floor at the mouth of Otago Harbour, driven by the tide to generate power, or a barrage from Port Chalmers to Portobello - or both.

The NZ herald has an update on a tidal power plant proposed for New Zealand - Sea to provide power for 250,000 homes

A tidal power station on the Kaipara Harbour seafloor could be providing power to a quarter of a million homes by the end of the decade.

The Environment Court has made a positive recommendation to Conservation Minister Tim Groser on a plan to generate electricity from the harbour's swift tidal flow. The approval is subject to fine-tuning of consent conditions.

Crest Energy plans to spend $600 million on sinking 200 tidal power turbines to the seabed of the harbour entrance, creating New Zealand's first tide-driven power station. The project will start with 20 turbines.

Last month, Todd Energy said it was taking a 30 per cent stake in Crest, which aims to be fully operational within nine years generating 200MW of power, enough to supply 250,000 homes.

Rigzone has an article about high hopes for a methane hydrates development offshore from New Zealand (in an area where a wind farm would probably achieve as high a utilisation rate as you'd find anywhere in the world, I'd note) - NZ Methane Hydrates May Soon Be Developed.

A gas industry using frozen gas hydrates below the seabed off the East Coast could be developed in the near future thanks to rapid global technical developments.

George Hooper, executive director of the Centre for Advanced Engineering, told a recent Oil and Gas conference in Wellington that exploitation of methane hydrates could transform New Zealand's energy market.

Hooper is lead author in a recent CAE report on an options analysis for commercial development of energy from offshore methane hydrates in New Zealand.

He said 'sweet spots' containing high concentrations (about 4-10%) of methane hydrate found in sheets under the seabed off the East Coast may contain about 8.5 - 21 trillion cubic feet (TCF) of recoverable gas.

He said New Zealand's methane hydrates endowment is very likely the largest in the world on a per capita basis and potentially one of the largest resources in the world.

Inferred resources of hydrates in New Zealand are 813 TCF with 40 TCF identified as potentially economically recoverable. Inferred world resources of hydrates are 20,000 TCF.

The ice-like crystals of water and methane molecules intermixed with sediments are found over 50,000 sq km from offshore Marlborough to offshore Gisborne, as well as off Fiordland.

A number of countries were now working on developing commercial gas production from hydrates including Japan, India, the US and South Korea. Japan was talking of a 2015 timeline for first production, though this might be optimistic, Hooper said.

He anticipates rapid progress in the engineering geology and production technologies required for hydrates extraction, both internationally and in New Zealand.

This demanded a considerable ramp-up of hydrate research and development effort here to ensure New Zealand has the earliest possible opportunity to develop its hydrate resources and associated skills.

A conceptual well development plan for a known Wairarapa hydrates 'sweet spot' site offshore Wairarapa, east of Wellington, was prepared for the study.

Costings for a small scale 10 petajoule a year 'proving' project indicated this option would require capital expenditure of $370 million.

To produce 150 PJ of gas, equal to the entire New Zealand gas market, the capital expenditure would be about $4 billion, about twice the $2 billion capital spending required to produce a similar volume of conventional natural gas.

The cost of building a 300 PJ project both for domestic gas use and for the export of LNG, would cost about $8 billion.

Beyond Zero Emissions has an interview with the CEO of New Zealand wind turbine manufacturer Windflow - Beyond Zero interviews Geoff Henderson of Windflow.

Geoff Henderson: I decided back in ’76 really to get into wind power. One of the contributing things I remember was one of my school mates had actually done a summer course on renewable energy at I think the University of Sydney, and he came back with some interesting information about the relative merits of solar and wind and so on. And I remember out of that that the basic flux(?) available, the solar resource, is of the order of a few hundreds watts a square metre of land area taken on a year-round basis, that very sunny places can have an average flux of 400 watts a square metre.

And by contrast, wind power, you can get the same or higher flux(?) 5.00min, but in warps(?)5.05min per square metre of vertical space, and therefore inherently the wind power uses a lot less land area than any of the other forms of solar. And I know this sounds a bit dry and boring and technical, but that is actually a very fundamental reason why wind power is the most economic form of renewable energy and has had the highest growth rate over the last 20-30 years.

So that the wind resource is huge – New Zealand of course is beautifully positioned in the Roaring Forties and I believe we will get most of our new electricity generation out of wind power over the next few decades. In some years – in the last ten years – wind power has actually been 100 per cent of new generation already. We’ve had no other new power stations going on but we’ve had 100 or 200 megawatts of wind power going in. ...

Scott Bilby: And your flagship technology to take you there is what you call the Windflow 500 Turbine. Can you tell us, you know, give us some basic specs to just to start off with that wind turbine, but also, what is it that sets it apart from other turbines. Why have you chosen that type of turbine?

Geoff Henderson: ,Sure. It’s a 500 kilowatt rating, 33-metre rota diameter with a hub height of about 30 metres which means that the top of the blade is about – when it goes through the top of its arc is about 46 metres above ground level, so less than 50 metres high. That’s enough for about 200 households at a very windy site, or 100 households at least. And given that our footprint is about a two-and-a-half metre diameter monopile concrete foundation now puts it in perspective the amount of power that we can get out of this turbine.

The two main technologies that set us apart are the two-bladed teetering rotor and the torque limiting gearbox, both of which come out of my time in the UK working for Wind Energy Group which was the leading R&D contractor to the UK Department of Energy, and the torque limiting gearbox was my contribution and my invention and that works with a two-bladed or a three-bladed windmill, and gives you some real torque control and electrical advantages as well.

The two-bladed teetering was something that I learnt over in the UK – became a convert to, having had a background in three-bladers prior to that. It does really work and it enables a lighter machine.

So, to summarise the commercial advantage, we’re coming in at about half the weight of comparable European three-bladed machines. So we’re using half the Earth’s resources if you like, tones of steel and concrete and other materials per unit of output. We’ve got less environmental impact in terms of earth works and road works and so on and my, the perspective that I’ve always taken on this is that I’m trying to get wind power going in New Zealand primarily, it’s the windiest country in the world so you’ve got to have tough turbines, but we’re also very much an unsubsidised environment in New Zealand, especially since the 1980s with the Rogernomics years. Subsidy has become a dirty word in New Zealand and in that lean and mean economic environment we have to make something that’s fundamentally cost effective.

The NZ Herald has a report that local utility Contact Energy is looking at building an LNG import terminal to fuel its existing gas fired power stations - Contact says demand means imported gas - at a cost.

Contact Energy is preparing to import gas if needed but warns it will be the most expensive of all generation options.

Managing director David Baldwin says it is estimated imported gas used in generation would be twice as expensive as existing domestic supplies.

Without major discoveries, the company believes domestic gas available for power generation is not assured and it had already been hurt by steep price rises in the past year.

For long periods during the 12 months to June 30 the switch from cheap Maui gas to onerously contracted Maui and Pohokura gas meant Contact was left with no option but to run its gas-fired stations at a loss.

New base-load gas-fired generation remains unlikely.

"Even if you took the most conservative demand profile for gas there looks to be a need to import gas sometime in the middle of the next decade in order to meet demand," Baldwin said.

While explorers, such as Todd Energy, are confident major gas discoveries to replace the dwindling giant Maui field will be made, Contact is preparing to import gas although it is changing tack on how that would be done.

The company and Genesis Energy had planned a land-based terminal at New Plymouth but had taken the decision to write down its $2.8 million initial investment because there was a cheaper, more flexible alternative.

New technology would allow Contact to buy LNG by the boat load which can be gasified on tankers and pumped straight into its $250 million Aharoa gas storage facility.

Baldwin said a large investment in heavy LNG terminal infrastructure would effectively commit the country to importing gas for many years.

LNG import proposals are likely to be contentious because they expose New Zealand to international gas prices and would impact on electricity prices, energy security and could discourage domestic exploration.

BusinessGreen has an article on some of the critisims being heaped on NZ's version of a smart meter rollout - Critics slam New Zealand's "dumb" smart meters.

New Zealand's environmental watchdog has warned that the 1.3 million household smart meters to be installed nationwide by 2012 will not be smart enough to deliver expected cuts in energy use.

Parliamentary commissioner for the environment, Jan Wright, said that she has "heard mutterings that the smart meters being installed in New Zealand are actually 'dumb meters'", adding that the new meters lacked the functionality required to underpin a truly "smart" electricity grid.

Power companies are in the process of replacing 800,000 outdated household electricity meters with newer models that would enable utility firms to obtain meter readings remotely. However, as there are no guidelines for the standard of the meters, different companies are installing varying types.

In a report presented to New Zealand parliament last week, Wright said that many of the new meters lacked basic real-time monitoring functions that would provide consumers with an incentive to curb energy use at peak times.

The devices also lack a microchip that would enable meters to "talk" to smart appliances, which are not yet available in the country.

Advocates of the technology argue that this ability to automatically turn off smart appliances at times of peak energy demand is one of the main environmental benefits of smart-grid projects.

Wright warned that without the necessary microchip, there would be little incentive to sell smart appliances in New Zealand.

The report also warned that retrofitting the real-time reporting and smart appliance functionality at a later date would cost at least an additional NZ$60m (£23.5m).

Green Party co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons accused power companies of installing 150,000 smart meters "with only half a brain" and the intention to install a further 650,000 "served nobody's interests but their own".

Wright's report noted that the rollout of smart electricity meters in New Zealand, unlike other countries, is being done without government oversight. " Regulatory intervention is needed to ensure environmental and consumer benefits can be delivered," she said.