Source
https://www.mbie.govt.nz/building-and-energy/energy-and-natural-resources/energy-statistics-and-modelling/energy-modelling/electricity-demand-and-generation-scenarios — original source (opens in a new tab; the file is not redistributed)
Summary
MBIE’s Electricity Demand and Generation Scenarios (EDGS) 2024 is the government’s central projection of how New Zealand’s electricity system could evolve to 2050, modelled across five scenarios (Reference, Growth, Constraint, Innovation, Environmental). The headline is strong, broad-based demand growth — 35–82% by 2050 — driven first by commercial/industrial electrification and later by transport EVs and the switch of fossil heating to electricity, pushing winter peak demand to 9–12.5 GW. The least-cost way to meet it is mostly onshore wind and solar, but every scenario still needs new gas peakers for firming. For Neobiome Intelligence this is a national reference and a validation backdrop rather than a community input: it confirms the wind+solar generation stack, the residential-heating-driven winter peak, and the firming/storage challenge that the community model addresses at small scale.
Key claims
- claim: "EDGS 2024 (July 2024) models five scenarios of NZ electricity demand and generation to 2050 — Reference (baseline), Growth (faster economy, less electrification investment), Constraint (slower growth, inverse of Growth), Innovation (faster tech uptake/cost falls), and Environmental (more ambitious emissions targets, higher carbon prices)."
source_location: "§'We have modelled five scenarios' (p.8)"
- claim: "Total electricity demand grows between 35.3% and 82.0% by 2050, reaching 62.1 TWh in the Reference scenario; by 2050 around half of all energy demand is met by electricity."
source_location: "Key results (p.1); Figure 1"
- claim: "Peak demand increases to between 9.1 GW and 12.5 GW by 2050, driven substantially by higher residential demand for heating, which raises winter demand peaks; peak is reached on winter evenings as residential users increase space- and water-heating demand, and residential consumers have the highest peak-to-average ratio."
source_location: "Key results (p.1); Peak demand modelling (p.~30)"
- claim: "The least-cost solution to meet most new demand is onshore wind and solar generation, with some new hydro and geothermal; to ensure enough firm capacity to reliably meet peak demand, new gas peakers are required for firming in ALL scenarios."
source_location: "Key results (p.1)"
- claim: "The Environmental and Innovation scenarios require less overall capacity to meet peak demand, due to more efficient load distribution and higher levels of battery installation (including distributed home batteries that shift consumption)."
source_location: "Key results (p.1); Peak demand modelling"
- claim: "Distributed solar PV connections (installed at individual dwellings/businesses) have grown at ~20% per year recently per Electricity Authority EMI data; growth is modelled exogenously and maximum uptake is expected to be materially less than 100% of dwellings (around a third are rentals, and some dwellings are unsuitable for PV)."
source_location: "§Distributed solar uptake (p.~22)"
- claim: "In the short term, commercial and industrial sectors drive demand growth; from the late 2030s transport electrification (EV uptake) plays a larger role; the level of fossil-fuel-to-electricity switching is a key uncertainty."
source_location: "Key results (p.1)"Neobiome Intelligence relevance
- Current-state national reference (resolves RT_117). EDGS 2024 is the successor scenario framework to the 2021 MBIE modelling behind RD_005 — the up-to-date national demand/generation/peak trajectory for any current-state NZ electricity-sector reference RD_017.
- Validation of the NI generation stack and couplings. Three national findings directly back the community-scale model: (1) the least-cost new build is wind + solar — the model’s core generation set; (2) winter peak is driven by residential space- and water-heating electrification — exactly the heat-pump load the model couples to electricity via COP; (3) firming is required in every scenario (gas peakers nationally) — the community analogue being battery/backup storage and the resilience work (RT_175–178) RD_017.
- Distributed-solar adoption context. ~20%/yr connection growth and the <100%-of-dwellings uptake ceiling (a third rentals, some unsuitable) is realistic context for community PV uptake assumptions RD_017.
- ⚠ Scope: national scenarios, not community per-household/per-region inputs — a reference and validation backdrop, not a model input cell.
Research targets
Documents to retrieve
- The EDGS 2024 detailed workbooks / scenario data tables (MBIE energy-modelling webpage) — the per-scenario numeric series (demand by sector, generation build by technology, peak by year) behind this results summary, if the NI model ever needs the national series rather than the headline figures.
Research gaps
- A community/distributed-scale read-across: EDGS models distributed solar exogenously at national level; it does not provide the per-community sizing the NI model needs (that stays with CR_008–CR_011 and the BRANZ/EECA demand sources).
Connections
Links to
Sources (1): RD_005
Referenced by
EDT domains (1): D01: Renewable Energy & Storage Systems