Explore this Work Programme:
Overview
Our work on gas metering is focused on adapting our current governance arrangements to recognise the roll out of advanced (smart) gas metering
Throughout the 2020s, retailers and meter owners have led the deployment of advanced gas meters (smart meters) to reticulated gas consumers. Advanced gas metering infrastructure (AGMI) is now installed at over 180,000 properties. Gas Industry Co's work on metering includes adapting gas governance arrangements to provide for AGMI and ensuring metering data is exchanged between industry participants in a standardised, secure and efficient manner.
Key areas for this Work Programme
This section contains details of our work assessing issues that arise with respect to the rollout of advanced gas metering infrastructure (AGMI)
Following our review of AGMI issues we published a Statement of Proposal followed by a Recommendation to the Minister for Energy to amend our gas governance rules.
The Gas Measurement Requirements and Procedures document gives an overview of the legal requirements and technical standards that apply to gas metering in New Zealand and describes common industry practices
AGMI
2017 Review
Feedback on the 2017 Gas Metering Review highlighted three consistent themes:
- Advanced gas metering infrastructure (AGMI) was, at the time, in the early stages of development, with no settled view on the right technical solution for the market (the technology trial phase).
- The market should be allowed to develop without regulatory intervention to ensure that innovation was not hampered.
- Determining some minimum standards would be a pragmatic step to ensure a common understanding of what market participants want from advanced metering.
In response to the third theme, we set up a technical advisory group (the Technical Advanced Metering Advisory Committee or TArMAC) to provide advice on specific AGMI issues, in preparation for the deployment of AGMI.
AGMI Deployment
In October 2019, Genesis Energy announced that it would begin rolling out advanced gas meters to its customers from 2020, in partnership with Vector Metering (now Bluecurrent).
Since that announcement, Gas Industry Co has worked through a programme of issue assessment, prioritisation, consultation and industry working groups, culminating in recommended changes to regulatory and non-regulatory governance arrangements.
The sections below cover the various stages of our work on AGMI. Our proposals to amend the Switching Rules and Reconciliation Rules to accommodate AGMI can be found on the Gas Governance Rule Changes page:
With the Genesis announcement, and the gas metering-related objectives and outcomes which we are expected to pursue under the Government Policy Statement on Gas Governance (April 2008), we considered it appropriate to conduct a review of how advanced metering is being deployed to the gas market and to assess whether any new gas market rules, regulations or non-regulatory arrangements are needed to address identified issues.
We had informal discussions with gas market stakeholders to understand the current state of advanced gas metering in the gas market, and to develop a list of potential issues arising from the deployment of that technology.
We published our Advanced Gas Metering – Issues Assessment paper, which set out a preliminary list of potential issues on the deployment of advanced metering technology into the gas market. Five submissions were received on this paper.
Related documents
Having reviewed all the submissions on the Advanced Gas Metering - Issues Assessment paper, we then published our summary and assessment of the submissions, our updated assessment of the priority to be afforded to each of the identified issues, and our recommendations on how each of these issues should be progressed.
We received 4 submissions on our Advanced Gas Metering Submissions Review and Recommendations paper. The submissions can be read below.
Related documents
Our consultation paper is based on the initial issues paper, stakeholder submissions to the initial issues paper and discussions with the AGMI working group (the former Technical Advanced Metering Advisory Committee).
It covers all initial AGMI issues to provide stakeholders the full picture, however, it focuses on the more important priority A issues.
After considering stakeholders’ feedback we prepared a Statement of Proposal in preparation for a recommendation to the Minister (MBIE).
Submissions closed on 4 September 2023 and five submissions were received.
Related documents
2017 Gas Metering Review
In March 2017, we released two consultation papers reviewing gas metering:
- Gas Metering Review: Review of metering service provider arrangements
- Gas Metering Review: Review of advanced metering technology.
We received eight submissions which are available below, along with our analysis and summary of submissions.
Submission themes
A consistent theme of the submissions was that advanced metering was still in the early stages of development. There was uncertainty about what ultimately might be the right technical solution for the New Zealand market.
Submitters considered the market should be allowed to develop without regulatory intervention, which could frustrate innovation.
At the same time, most submitters (7 of 8) considered that determining some minimum standards would be a pragmatic step to ensure a common understanding of what market participants want from advanced metering.
TarMAC
We set up a technical advisory group, the Technical Advanced Metering Advisory Committee (TArMAC), to provide advice on the issue of advanced metering and minimum standards. The papers are available below.
Related documents
Submissions
Gas Metering Requirements and Procedures
About the document
We maintain a number of requirements and procedures documents. These give an overview of the legal requirements and technical standards that apply to particular areas of the industry. They also describe common industry practices.
Our 2019 review
In 2019, we reviewed and updated the Gas Measurement Requirements and Procedures document and invited comment from stakeholders.
This was in anticipation of the Gas Transmission Access Code (GTAC) coming into effect and replacing the Maui Pipeline Operating Code (MPOC) and Vector Transmission Code (VTC).
Related documents
Available below are:
- the original proposed update (Gas Measurement Requirements and Procedures 2019 update, clean and marked up)
- the comments we received on the proposed update and our review of those comments (191001 Review of comments on June 2019 draft Gas Quality Requirements and Procedures document)
- the revised update (191001 Gas Measurement Requirements and Procedures, clean and marked up).