Wholesale datasets

Dispatch reserve prices

Real-time pricing was introduced in the New Zealand wholesale electricity market on 1 November 2022, resulting in a new price series - dispatch reserve prices.

Dispatch reserve prices are typically derived from the RTD instance of the SPD model and made available to the market in real time by the pricing manager. Occasionally the most recent PRSS (short price-responsive schedule) price will be used if no RTD price is available. And if scarcity pricing is in effect, the dispatch reserve price will be derived from the RTDP (RTD for pricing) schedule.

Reserve prices are produced throughout a trading period at intervals ranging from one to several minutes in duration. At the end of the trading period, interim reserve prices for the trading period will be calculated as the time-weighted average of the dispatch reserve prices for that period. If no pricing error claims are subsequently lodged, interim prices will be declared to be final prices by 2pm the following business day.

Reserve prices are collated into a single daily CSV file, grouped by year, and made available early each morning. The file schema is as follows:

• TradingDate – the trading date to which the price refers; yyyy-mm-dd
• TradingPeriod – the trading period number to which the price refers
• PublishDateTime – the New Zealand date and time, in ISO 8601 format, when the price was published by the pricing manager
• PointOfConnection – the point of connection (POC) on the grid; BEN2201 in the south and HAY2201 in the north
• Island – Island (NI/SI)
• FIRDollarsPerMegawattHour – the published fast instantaneous reserve (FIR) price in dollars per megawatt-hour. FIR prices are sometimes called 6-second prices
• SIRDollarsPerMegawattHour – the published sustained instantaneous reserve (SIR) price in dollars per megawatt-hour. SIR prices are sometimes called 60-second prices.