Tropical Cyclone Dylan seems to have reduced demand in the “Northern” zone by about 50MW

[posted at 09:15]

The Bureau of Meteorology says that:

Ex-Tropical Cyclone Dylan made landfall near Hideaway Bay (east of Bowen), at approximately 3:30am (AEST), as a Category 2 cyclone.

The landfall and flight path correspond to Powerlink’s “North” zone in their QData set, accessible through ez2view, so we thought we’d have a quick look this morning, given some disruptions to power supply in the Ergon Energy distribution area:

It’s never an exact science, comparing one day to the next, but a simple eyeballing of the chart above shows that the demand shapes for Ross (Townsville) and Far North (Cairns) are largely the same but the demand shape in North (Mackay area) is significantly down on the day before (which was slightly lower than the day before that).

It appears that the reduction might be of the order of 50MW which would be a combination of people off supply (fallen powerlines and the like), plus the effect of preparations taken yesterday with businesses and schools closed etc, plus reduced air-conditioning consumption in the general area due to (what we assume are) cooler conditions.