Bill Hogan on open access and non-discrimination in electricity

That Bill Hogan is a Professor of Energy Policy at Harvard University and Director of the enormously influential Harvard Electricity Policy Group is impressive. Locally, however, he has particular status as the guiding mind behind the design of New Zealand's wholesale electricity market.

One of Hogan's key recommendations in the establishment of the wholesale market was that Financial Transmission Rights ("FTRs") be created alongside it. This wasn't part of the original implementation but, 16 years later, the Electricity Authority has appointed an FTR manager with the responsibility of running our first FTR auction in May 2013.

Professor Hogan hasn't worked in New Zealand since the early 2000s but was interested and pleased to hear of this new development. He kindly agreed to talk to the podcast about FTRs and why they're so important.

To do this, we must first establish the purpose and design for the market to understand the role of FTRs within it. In last week's podcast Bill went back to the early 1990s in New Zealand and the "continuing seminar" around the development of competitive markets for electricity that set the whole process in motion. This week he explains the unusual problems that the physics of electricity transmission create in achieving open access. It's no bundle of straws.