NZ Electricity

Goal

Query New Zealand electricity-market and outage information through a small deterministic CLI with human-readable and JSON output, without browser automation, login, private API keys, or local cache state.

This skill ships support for:

• EM6 current regional wholesale spot prices
• EM6 current NZ carbon intensity and renewable percentage
• Electricity Authority EMI trading-period grid demand by New Zealand or zone region
• Electricity Authority EMI final/interim historical energy prices by point of connection
• Electricity Authority EMI monthly generation output by plant, aggregated by fuel type
• Electricity Authority EMI installed distributed-generation trends, including rooftop solar uptake
• Electricity Authority gentailer energy-margin official-source availability checks
• Public outage feeds for supported NZ lines companies

Use this when

• A user asks for current wholesale electricity spot prices in New Zealand
• A user asks for NZ grid demand or demand by EMI zone
• A user asks for current NZ grid carbon intensity or renewable percentage
• A user wants historical wholesale spot prices for a node or point of connection
• A user wants monthly NZ generation output by fuel type or generation plant
• A user wants installed distributed-generation or rooftop-solar trends by market segment or capacity band
• A user asks for gentailer energy-margin data and needs to know whether the official Authority source currently exposes machine-readable rows
• A user asks for current or planned public outages from supported NZ lines companies
• A workflow needs public, no-login, machine-readable NZ electricity data

Do not use this for

• Retail plan comparison, tariff advice, Powerswitch-style savings, or ICP-specific billing questions
• Authenticated EMI API products, EM6 paid feeds, private user data, or account actions
• Current real-time node load, current node generation, or current generation mix; the documented EM6 endpoints for those returned unauthorized in live testing
• Reconstructing gentailer energy margins from spot prices, generation volumes, hedge positions, or retail demand; the energy-margin command reports official source availability and points to official alternatives, but does not derive the per-company split
• ICP-specific outage status, outage subscriptions, outage reporting, or fault logging
• Redistributing public-data extracts as a standalone dataset

Preferred workflow

1. Run scripts/cli.py with the narrowest subcommand that answers the task
2. Use spot --region for live regional wholesale price snapshots
3. Use demand --region for national or EMI zone-level grid demand
4. Use prices --node ... --from ... --to ... for historical nodal prices
5. Use generation --month ... --type ... for generation by fuel type from EMI monthly data
6. Use dg-trends, dg-latest, or dg-summary for installed distributed-generation and rooftop-solar EMI retail report data
7. Use energy-margin --json when a task needs the current official status of the Authority gentailer energy-margin source
8. Use outages --company ... or outages --region ... for lines-company public outage records
9. Use --json when another tool or agent needs machine-readable output
10. Mention the upstream source and whether the value is current EM6 data, EMI report/dataset data, EMI retail report data, Authority dashboard status, or a distributor outage feed

CLI

Run with:

python3 skills/nz-electricity/scripts/cli.py <command> [flags]

Commands

• spot [--region REGION] [--json] — current EM6 regional wholesale spot prices in $/MWh
• carbon [--json] — current EM6 NZ carbon intensity and renewable percentage
• demand [--region REGION] [--from DATE] [--to DATE] [--json] — EMI trading-period grid demand for New Zealand or an EMI zone
• prices --node NODE [--from DATE] [--to DATE] [--json] — EMI historical final/interim energy prices for a point of connection
• generation [--month YYYY-MM] [--type fuel] [--limit N] [--json] — EMI monthly generation output by fuel type and plant
• dg-trends [--fuel solar_all] [--market-segment All|Res|SME|Com|Ind] [--capacity All_Total|Small|Large] [--region-type NZ|ZONE|...] [--from DATE] [--to DATE] [--json] — EMI GUEHMT installed distributed-generation trends
• dg-latest [--fuel solar_all] [--market-segment All|Res|SME|Com|Ind] [--capacity All_Total|Small|Large] [--region-type NZ|ZONE|...] [--json] — latest GUEHMT distributed-generation rows
• dg-summary [--fuel solar_all] [--market-segment All|Res|SME|Com|Ind] [--capacity All_Total|Small|Large] [--region-type NZ|ZONE|...] [--from DATE] [--to DATE] [--yearly] [--json] — summarise GUEHMT distributed-generation trends
• energy-margin [--company COMPANY] [--from DATE] [--to DATE] [--json] — probe the official EA gentailer energy-margin source; when the exact per-company split is not machine-retrievable, return guidance plus the official alternatives (EA per-company net profit, gentailer segment financials, retail gross margin, the aggregate figure, and the post-5-Jul-2026 feed)
• outages [--company COMPANY] [--region REGION] [--all] [--json] — current public outage records from supported NZ lines companies; --all also includes planned, scheduled, or recent records where feeds expose them

Examples:

python3 skills/nz-electricity/scripts/cli.py spot --region auckland
python3 skills/nz-electricity/scripts/cli.py spot --json
python3 skills/nz-electricity/scripts/cli.py carbon --json
python3 skills/nz-electricity/scripts/cli.py demand --region UNI --from 2026-05-22 --to 2026-05-22 --json
python3 skills/nz-electricity/scripts/cli.py prices --node BEN2201 --from 2026-05-20 --to 2026-05-20 --json
python3 skills/nz-electricity/scripts/cli.py generation --month 2026-04 --type hydro --limit 5 --json
python3 skills/nz-electricity/scripts/cli.py dg-trends --fuel solar_all --market-segment Res --capacity All_Total --from 2025-01-01 --to 2025-12-31 --json
python3 skills/nz-electricity/scripts/cli.py dg-latest --fuel solar_all --market-segment All --json
python3 skills/nz-electricity/scripts/cli.py dg-summary --fuel solar_all --yearly --json
python3 skills/nz-electricity/scripts/cli.py energy-margin --company meridian --json
python3 skills/nz-electricity/scripts/cli.py outages --company vector
python3 skills/nz-electricity/scripts/cli.py outages --region tahawai --json

Resources

• CLI entrypoint: scripts/cli.py
• API and dataset notes: references/api-notes.md

Notes

• No private API key, username, password, cookie, or browser session is required for implemented commands
• spot and carbon use EM6 public free JSON feeds from https://api.em6.co.nz/ords/em6/data_api
• demand uses the public Electricity Authority EMI Demand trends CSV report from https://www.emi.ea.govt.nz/Wholesale/Reports/W_GD_C
• prices and generation use public Electricity Authority EMI CSV dataset files from https://www.emi.ea.govt.nz
• dg-trends, dg-latest, and dg-summary use the public Electricity Authority EMI GUEHMT retail CSV report from https://www.emi.ea.govt.nz/Retail/Reports/guehmt
• energy-margin probes the Electricity Authority energy-margin dashboard/article and linked Tableau public workbook; it returns explicit source-unavailable status while those public official surfaces do not expose machine-readable per-company rows, and points to official alternatives (per-company net profit and segment financials, retail gross margin, the EA aggregate, and the aggregate-only feed due from 5 July 2026) so a caller is not left empty-handed
• outages uses clean public distributor feeds for Vector, Wellington Electricity, Orion, Powerco, Aurora Energy, WEL Networks, Unison, Counties Energy, and Top Energy
• Vector's public map exposes outage shapes only, so Vector records may only have an approximate centroid and outage type
• Northpower was checked but not shipped because its outage map uses Livewire snapshot/update state rather than a clean stable public JSON feed
• EM6 regional spot prices are current dispatch-price snapshots and may update every five minutes
• EMI demand is trading-period report data in GWh; current-day data may be partial and recent periods can use final-pricing proxy conventions described by EMI
• EMI final/interim energy prices are half-hourly by point of connection; recent files may be interim until finalized
• EMI generation output by plant is monthly and historical, not current real-time generation mix
• EMI distributed-generation trends are monthly retail report data derived from registry fields; market segments are not mutually exclusive, and Solar+Batteries category changes in November 2023 can create Solar/Other series breaks
• Gentailer energy-margin values are not reconstructed or copied into this skill; the exact per-company split existed only in an EA Tableau dashboard that has been removed (and was never archived), and the collection resuming 5 July 2026 publishes aggregated monthly data only. The energy-margin payload's guidance, aggregate_energy_margin, and alternatives fields point callers at the official per-company sources that do exist (net profit, segment financials, retail gross margin)
• Distributor outage feeds vary by company and may omit cause, customer count, or restoration time
• Default output is human-readable; every data command supports --json for chaining into other tools
• Avoid high-volume polling; use narrow regions, nodes, date ranges, and months