The term ‘Price Energy Harvest’ is one that we coined and applied in the Generator Statistical Digest 2019.
(A) Why is the ‘Price Energy Harvest’ important?
The NEM is perhaps the most volatile commodity market in the world – with prices varying across a large range between two extremes:
A1) a Market Price Floor that is below $0/MWh;
A2) all the way up to the Market Price Cap, which is the highest Market Price Cap we know of in any wholesale electricity market around the world.
This volatility is a natural outcome of being an ‘Energy Only Market’ that uses (bid) Price-based dispatch.
Because of this volatility the return a generator can make is significantly dependent on being able to be fully utilised during the (relatively rare) times that the spot price is very high, and also on avoiding (as much as possible) periods where the price is negative.
The ‘Price Energy Harvest’ concept was created to make the level of success*, or otherwise, in doing this, quite apparent.
* In the interpretation of these results with respect to ‘success’ analysts need to keep in mind other complicating factors, including:
1) Level (and nature) of hedge cover for the unit; and
2) Dynamics related to the 5/30 issue.
(B) Where is it used in our products?
Over time, the concept of the ‘Price Energy Harvest’ is likely to be used in a growing number of products:
(B1) Price Energy Harvest in the GSD2019
In the ‘B’ Pages of the GSD2019 we show the Price Energy Harvest discretely for every DUID across all dispatch intervals through CAL 2019.
The left section of shows a histogram of the unit’s production, energy constrained availability as a volume and the unit’s maximum volume broken into bins according to the regional reference price (RRP) of the dispatch interval.
The middle section shows the corresponding capacity factor and availability factor for each price bin. Also shown is the maximum volume as a factor being 100% by definition.
For reference the right section gives the total time at each price band.
Non-scheduled units do not have an availability
(B2) Price Energy Harvest in WattClarity articles
Where articles on WattClarity speak specifically about the Price Energy Harvest and have been tagged as such, you can find them linked here.