The open data situation for electricity information in New Zealand is "pretty good". The main problem is that people in charge see commercial value in up-to-date cost and usage information so the "free data" is delayed. This prevents people from using near real-time data to improve efficiency of their own power systems.

This paywall exists because of the belief that profit is more important than climate action.

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[–] Dave 6 points 6 months ago (1 children)

There's a new article here where Vector is complaining that the govt isn't moving on EV charging to get a smart charging setup. I think the idea is that the chargers should be controllable like some water heating, where the power controllers can disable them during peak times since many people charging cars plug them in when they get home (peak time) but don't care if it's charged then or some time overnight so long as it's charged by morning.

This is an opportunity to have smart chargers retrieve a spot price and change their charging schedule based on this. We should also have smart solar setups where they charge a battery, then feed into the grid at peak times.

The open data situation for electricity information in New Zealand is “pretty good”. The main problem is that people in charge see commercial value in up-to-date cost and usage information so the “free data” is delayed. This prevents people from using near real-time data to improve efficiency of their own power systems.

What's the barrier here? Data comes from the manager of the national grid, which is the government (Transpower), so what's the commercial barrier to releasing that info? Transpower have nothing to gain.

[–] deadbeef79000 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

so what's the commercial barrier to releasing that info? Transpower have nothing to gain.

The barrier is that someone will be willing to pay for real-time data, which, when an MBA gets involved becomes a revenue opportunity and giving it away for free becomes theft of potential revenue.

[–] pow 2 points 6 months ago

To further add to that point, Transpower is a state-owned enterprise. SOEs are a huge problem for open-data because they are beholden to profits over public good.

A good example of how SOEs work contrary to public good is trying to get housing data from QV: because the data they generate has "commercial value", they are not required to release it as an SOE. This makes it very difficult to model the impact different housing policies might have.

Another example of gatekeeping data in the name of profit is our SOE MetService. Their paltry open-data offerings are the bare minimum to meet the government requirements, while their website and app try to pack ever-more advertisements into what should a public service.

In contrast, Crown Research Institutes seem to be a bit better on the open-data front. Even though it is metered, NIWA provides generous access to their historical data, at least in comparison to MetService.

State-owned Enterprises are a relic of neo-liberal economic reforms from the 70s and 80s. Some public services don't benefit from the profit motive. My hope is that they are proactively re-evaluated instead of simply allowing them to ossify into the skeletons of public service they could be.

[–] Viper_NZ 2 points 6 months ago

The old version of EM6 was so much better :(