Controlled load availability

By Malcolm Souness - Director 221b Limited
During January 2020, we undertook an investigation into electricity meter register configurations on New Zealand electricity networks.

The number of infrequently used register configurations indicates that legacy ripple control schedule durations remain in the Electricity Registry. For example, Vector has over 0.2M controlled meter registers with 1-23 hours availability, however just one has an availability of 5 hours, and one other has six hours available. The balance of probabilities suggests these may not be legitimate hours available.

Another network has confirmed its control duration periods are 8 and 16 hours, which eliminates more than 40% of meter register configurations on its network.

What does this mean?

Each electricity retailer has to map meter register configurations against network charges to ensure customers are charged the correct rates for use of the electricity network. Eliminating controlled register configurations to the actual configurations used by each network has multiple benefits:

1. Reduced complexity of electricity network billing
2. Improved accuracy of revenue reported to network
3. Correct statement of network service presented to customer (do not overstate service availability as 17 hours instead of 16)

We believe a 30% reduction of meter register configurations on each network may be achievable through elimination of legacy hours of availability.