Heatwave to drive QLD Sunday evening demand to a record?

South-East Queensland has turned on its best behaviour for the G20 delegates this weekend, registering a hot Saturday and what feels like an even hotter Sunday.

I was startled a little earlier to see a massive scheduled demand of almost 8,100MW forecast by AEMO for this evening – after the moderating effect of solar PV has gone away.  This was shown in the NEM-Watch snapshot below I took at 13:20 NEM time:

To gain some context to the question, “how exceptional would this be for a Sunday?” I powered up NEM-Review and generated this trended comparison of maximum, average and minimum Scheduled Demand:

As we can see, a half-hour scheduled demand above 8,000MW would indeed be a record for Sunday especially for a “spring” November!

For some context, refer here, here and here for background on that “wacky weekend” for Queensland in summer 2012-13.

I note that (in later predispatch forecasts) the AEMO has moderated the forecast demand somewhat (now peaking just below 8000MW at 17:00, with a slightly smaller peak later at 19:00).  We’ll have to see what eventuates, whilst staying somewhere cool.