Meridian Energy

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Meridian Energy Limited, a New Zealand-based company, performs electricity generation and electricity retailing. The company generates the largest proportion of New Zealand's electricity, providing for approximately one-third of the country's power needs (12,000 GWh). Greenpeace has judged it the only "green" electricity company in New Zealand.

In New Zealand the company owns and operates nine hydroelectic generating stations in the South Island: eight on the Waitaki River, and the country's largest hydroelectric station - Manapouri Power Station - on Lake Manapouri. Meridian sells power to approximately 200,000 customers, primarily located in the South Island. The company operates major offices in Christchurch and Twizel, with the head office in Wellington. A new head office is currently under construction [1]. As of 2006, the CEO of Meridian is Dr Keith Turner.

Meridian has started to build new generation-capacity in line with a commitment it made in 2004 to develop only renewable forms of power generation, such as hydroelectricity and wind-power. It has several wind-farm projects in progress. Meridian operates the new Te Apiti wind farm - currently New Zealand's largest. It stands north of the Manawatu Gorge in the North Island.

[edit] History

Meridian originated from the breakup of the Electricity Corporation of New Zealand (ECNZ) in 1999 as a result of the reforms of the New Zealand electricity market. Meridian's share of ECNZ became corporatised as a state-owned enterprise with its own board of directors and with two Ministerial shareholders: the Minister of Finance and the Minister of State Owned Enterprises.

2001 - Meridian purchased five mini hydro-power stations in Australia. These stations linked with dams used primarily for irrigation, and have a total generating capacity of 62 MW.

September 2001 - Meridian purchased the South Island customer-base of Natural Gas Corporation (NGC), at the time New Zealand's largest electricity retailer. The purchase came towards the end of an exceptionally dry autumn. Low hydro-levels had driven the wholesale market spot prices to very high levels. NGC had purchased the customer-base when Canada's Trans Alta quit New Zealand. NGC re-branded itself as OnEnergy to escape the poor reputation of the "Trans Alta" brand. OnEnergy found itself with insufficient generation capacity to stand the high winter market prices, and had made the critical mistake of not purchasing any hedge contracts. It attempted to raise its retail prices, but its customers then flocked to other retailers. Finally, after suffering huge losses, NGC had perforce to quit the retail sector, selling its customer-base to two of the Government's companies: Meridian and Genesis Power Limited. At that point the New Zealand electricity market became further vertically integrated, and many have come to believe that this adversely affected competition in the retail electricity market.

April 2003 - Meridian extended its operations in Australia with the purchase of Southern Hydro, increasing its Australian generating capacity by 540 MW.

Southern Hemisphere Winter 2003 - Low hydro inflows and storage levels again resulted in exceptional wholesale market spot prices. As a consequence, the retailers TrustPower and Freshstart abandoned market areas where they had no generation. This strengthened Meridian's dominance of the South Island customer-base.

29 March 2004 - Meridian cancelled Project Aqua [2], a controversial 524 MW power scheme for six dams and a man-made canal on the Lower Waitaki River in North Otago. The scheme allegedly represented the last opportunity for large-scale hydroelectric development of this magnitude in New Zealand. Abandoning the venture cost Meridian NZ $38.7 million. - Meridian stopped the scheme because of uncertainty over rights to use the water, growing costs, and the difficulties and uncertainties with obtaining consents under the Resource Management Act legislation. In July 2004, Meridian announced an independent audit of the abandoned scheme.

9 December 2004 - New Zealand's Prime Minister, Helen Clark officially opened Te Apiti - Meridian's first wind-farm.

2 June 2005 - Meridian announced a proposal to develop a wind-farm west of Wellington. The "Project West Wind" proposal envisages up to 70 wind turbines with a total capacity of 210 MW, built across 55.8 square km on rural land near Makara at the south-western tip of the North Island. A local pressure group, the Makara Guardians, opposes the scheme. Successful application for resource consent for the project was announced on December 21, 2005 [3]. The consent was subsequently appealed.

30 November 2005 - Meridian completed the sale of its Australian operation, Southern Hydro, for $A1.42 billion ($NZ1.52 billion) to Australian Gas Light Company. [4]. Meridian had steadily expanded and upgraded its assets in Australia since purchase, including commissioning a 91MW wind-farm. Nevertheless, the sale commanded a hefty premium, driven by new demand for renewable energy-generation because of mandatory Australian requirements that electricity retailers sell a proportion of renewable energy.

New Zealand electricity retailers