Heavy rain across Victoria squashes Small and Large Solar on Friday 29th January 2021

A quick note this morning, following a conversation with some Melbourne-based people who commented about the heavy rain being experienced this morning (Fri 29th Jan 2021).

(A)  Demand up in Victoria, as a result of the rainfall…

I’d noticed that Scheduled Demand for Victoria in NEMwatch v10 was higher than I had become used to seeing for quite some time (in the ‘Green Zone’ as distinct from the lower ‘Blue Zone’) – which we can see in the snapshot below from 09:40 dispatch interval (NEM time):

(B)  Thick band of cloud cover (state-wide) with the rainfall.

The Himawari 8 Real-Time satellite cover map reveals the reason that the solar production has been squashed right across Victoria this morning.  Here’s a snapshot around the same time as the interval above:

… showing cloud band covering TAS and VIC, and also encroaching into southern NSW.

(C)  A reminder of increased weather dependency

Somewhat fitting (on a day when we’re making preparations for the release of the Generator Statistical Digest 2020 on Monday next week (1st Feb 2021)) that we’re reminded of what we wrote two years ago in the Generator Report Card 2018  in that the NEM is (suffering from, or blessed with – depending on one’s perspective) increasing weather dependency:

When we have the GSD2020 out of the way, we’ll give more focused thought to (perhaps!) updating the 180-page analytical component of the GRC2018 in what might become a Generator Report Card 2020.

That means that interested parties have only <76 hours to save $300exGST when pre-ordering their copy of the GSD2020.