{"id":176529,"date":"2025-12-10T03:25:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-10T03:25:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/176529\/"},"modified":"2025-12-10T03:25:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-10T03:25:07","slug":"meridian-energy-to-spill-water-from-benmore-dam-as-south-island-lakes-rise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/176529\/","title":{"rendered":"Meridian Energy to spill water from Benmore Dam as South Island lakes rise"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"WEeFTHfsBFTkKSx\" style=\"display:none\">Meridian has been releasing water from Lake P\u016bkaki \u2013 the country\u2019s biggest hydro lake \u2013 since December 3.<\/p>\n<p class=\"WEeFTHfsBFTkKSx\" style=\"display:none\">High lake levels have depressed wholesale prices across the country, particularly in the South Island.<\/p>\n<p class=\"WEeFTHfsBFTkKSx\" style=\"display:none\">On Monday, prices at Benmore sank to just $3.00 per megawatt hour (MWh) compared with $109MWh at Otahuhu and $88.91 at Haywards, according to NZX data.<\/p>\n<p class=\"WEeFTHfsBFTkKSx\" style=\"display:none\">Wholesale power prices are volatile even at the best of times and can vary greatly across the country.<\/p>\n<p class=\"WEeFTHfsBFTkKSx\" style=\"display:none\">In the winter of 2024, wholesale power prices peaked at $820MWh, driven by low hydro lake levels, calm conditions for wind power, and constrained gas supply.<\/p>\n<p class=\"WEeFTHfsBFTkKSx\" style=\"display:none\">Gas-powered electricity generation is responsible for about 8% of the country\u2019s power supply.<\/p>\n<p>Stay ahead with the latest market moves, corporate updates, and economic insights by subscribing to our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nzherald.co.nz\/my-account\/profile\/newsletters\/?from=cmp\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.nzherald.co.nz\/my-account\/profile\/newsletters\/?from=cmp\">Business newsletter<\/a> \u2013 your essential weekly round-up of all the business news you need.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Meridian has been releasing water from Lake P\u016bkaki \u2013 the country\u2019s biggest hydro lake \u2013 since December 3.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":176530,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[806,17517,113134,138,7795,1667,71,17577,2514,5365,661,113136,68596,111,139,69,6560,8244,1436,6633,544,1240,48216,113135,4497,61,701,376,1533],"class_list":["post-176529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-as","tag-because","tag-benmore","tag-business","tag-dam","tag-energy","tag-from","tag-hydro","tag-island","tag-lakes","tag-major","tag-melt","tag-meridian","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-rain","tag-recent","tag-rise","tag-snow","tag-some","tag-south","tag-spill","tag-spilling","tag-start","tag-to","tag-tomorrow","tag-water","tag-will"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176529\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/176530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}