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Speaker 1: Now it turns out it rained a bit, so the

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Speaker 1: panic over winter and the power supply might have abated.

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Speaker 1: Our hydro supplies are healthier than first thought Meridian, and

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Speaker 1: our confidence in our capacity, which means, as I mentioned

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Speaker 1: earlier in the program, that t Y can get back

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Speaker 1: to making aluminium at full pace. John Harvard is the

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Speaker 1: Major Electricity Users Group chair and as well as John,

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Speaker 1: morning to you, good morning this whole You can make

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Speaker 1: some aluminium, but not as much as you want. Thing

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Speaker 1: is very third world, isn't it. When are we getting

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Speaker 1: over this?

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Speaker 2: Well? The short answered Mike is we're not in the

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Speaker 2: short term. So already the long term forecast for next

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Speaker 2: year is not looking great for next winter, and part

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Speaker 2: of it is we're just completely reliant on the weather

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Speaker 2: because we haven't sorted out what we call firm supplier

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Speaker 2: of electricity, which is historically being performed by gas currently coal,

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Speaker 2: and we need more generation in that space that actually

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Speaker 2: ensures that we've got electricity twenty four to seven rather

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Speaker 2: than being overly reliant on highly intermittent renewables like so

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Speaker 2: Solar electricity, for instance, generates electricity about twenty to twenty

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Speaker 2: five percent of the time. Wind generates about forty percent

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Speaker 2: of the time, and that's the generation people are building

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Speaker 2: at the moment. What we need them to be building

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Speaker 2: is much what we call firmer supply. We need more

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Speaker 2: development into hydrogeneration, into geothermal generation, but it's just not happening.

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Speaker 1: No, exactly. Every time I talk to a power company,

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Speaker 1: they reassure me that eventually in time will have so

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Speaker 1: much choice that we can't fail. Is that true or not.

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Speaker 2: No, well, it's true to the extent that you trust

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Speaker 2: that they will overbuild so much that will have a

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Speaker 2: surplus of supply. Historically, what's happened is we've built as

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Speaker 2: much as we need at that moment, but we don't

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Speaker 2: get ahead of it, so prices don't come down. So

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Speaker 2: we fundamentally have an affordability crisis in the country at

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Speaker 2: the moment. So the Northern Infrastructure Forum, Orking Chamber of

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Speaker 2: COMMISS released the survey last week showed that one in

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Speaker 2: four businesses has cut their production because of high electricity

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Speaker 2: PRICESCT even worse, one in four businesses has had to

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Speaker 2: sack someone or let them go because of high electricity prices.

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Speaker 2: So there's no way as a country we get good

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Speaker 2: economic growth. There's no way we get to double our

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Speaker 2: exports until we tackle this affordability crisis.

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Speaker 1: All right, good and so I appreciate it very much.

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Speaker 1: Labour and the Greens will tell you this is all good.

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Speaker 1: Of course we want more. Where this came from John Harbord,

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Speaker 1: who's the Major Electricity Users Group chair. For more from

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Speaker 1: the Mic Asking Breakfast, listen live to news talks the'd

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Speaker 1: be from six am weekdays, or follow the podcast on

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Speaker 1: iHeartRadio