Mike's Minute: We need the full story on the power crisis

A not unfair question to ask, as we return to the power crisis of 2024, is are we being told the full story? 

For the third time Tiwai has been asked to reduce power use. 

Methanex is allegedly in the throes of cutting another deal with the Government over gas. 

Winston has already announced they are closing. They are not alone. 

The Major Electricity Users' Group is asking us, all of us, to use less power. 

So just how bad is this? Who knows how bad it is, and are they not telling us? 

I read an article that involves one of the mill workers being laid off. He talks of the meeting where the boss is in tears, lots of people are in tears as, of a town of one thousand, 230 are losing their jobs. 

People text me and talk of hedging. It's not an unfair point but you can't hedge forever, and the major point is not the here and now. It's the fact the here and now is not a one off. 

Each and every winter Transpower tells us about cold mornings and supply issues. This is at the same time that whatever the power companies are investing in clearly doesn’t cover the gab. 

It also clearly doesn’t take into account EV's, data centres and A1. 

If an aluminium smelter can't do what it wants to and if a mill can't even open, we aren't really forging ahead to a new tomorrow with AI and data centres springing up all over the place. 

Methanex is now a company that sells gas, not produces methane. How many people are giving up how much to scrape through? 

If we scrape through, what then? Apart from the sigh of relief, what then? 

What's the plan? Is the investment as it stands providing us with a future-proofed level of power or not? 

Does anyone really know? 

I don’t blame the worker in the article, but he asked why the Government doesn’t bail the mill out, given Mercury supply the power and the Government has a stake in Mercury. 

When you're asking questions like that pretty much everything is broken. 

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