Getting into Hot Water in Auckland

In the last couple of weeks, there have been problems in Auckland, New Zealand thanks to a substation fire. It was bad enough for power to thousands of households to have been turned off for multiple days. The good news is that there have not been any reports of people killed due to the fire.

The interesting thing is the story that appeared last week in the New Zealand papers about how people were complaining that they did not have hot water for a few days, despite having power. According to the story, something like 85,000 locals were not getting hot water, since they had signed up for cheaper electricity for hot water, on the agreement that energy would be controlled by the energy company. This is commonly called Off Peak

The thing with this type of scheme is that it is a win both for the users and the power company, normally. The consumers get cheaper power, and the power company gets to sell electricity at a time that suits it. In the case of the New Zealand incident, supplies were rather constrained, and the power company made a decision. They figured that it was better to supply electricity to other consumers who were blacked out, rather than supplying electricity to consumers who had power to heat water.

Given the choice of a cold shower and no electricity at all, I would prefer the cold shower.

The article is an interesting read. We at Redshift Wireless are also working on products to help utilities and consumers manage their Hot Water loads, saving everyone money and saving the planet at the same time.