New Zealand’s hydro-electric storage lake levels improved slightly during May 2007, with greater inflows than those recorded in April.
New Zealand’s hydro-electric strorage stood at 2198 Gigawatt hours (GWh) 72% of average for the time of year at the beginning of May 2007. Inflows during the month and tight management by authorities allowed the figure to climb to 2333 GWh, 81% of average by month’s end.
However, whilst storage improved, the overall lake levels remained consistently below 2006 figures ”“ a year in which winter shortages caused concern.
Inflows were above average on only 10 days during May, with the trend improving toward the end of the month.
Tight management saw north-to-south energy transfers via the Cook Strait cables exceed south-to-north transfers on 20 days.
Encouragingly, the trend which showed lake depletion parallelling the 1992 crisis year decline during April has been reversed, allowing storage to climb back toward last year’s levels by the end of May.
[Compiled from data supplied by M-co.]