Coupled with this I’ve added this snapshot from ez2view at 13:05, with the Large Solar Farms highlighted, to provide some indication of how widespread the impact has been through today:
Note that FCAS Contingency Raise prices have been sky-high in the QLD region for hours … driven significantly by constraints on the QNI interconnector amongst other things.
Paul was one of the founders of Global-Roam in February 2000. He is currently the CEO of the company and the principal author of WattClarity. Writing for WattClarity has become a natural extension of his work in understanding the electricity market, enabling him to lead the team in developing better software for clients.
Before co-founding the company, Paul worked as a Mechanical Engineer for the Queensland Electricity Commission in the early 1990s. He also gained international experience in Japan, the United States, Canada, the UK, and Argentina as part of his ES Cornwall Memorial Scholarship.
For several days in early December, temperatures reaching 40 degrees in Queensland and New South Wales cause airconditioning load (and hence total demand) to soar in both regions.
The high demands resulted in very high prices being experienced in both QLD and NSW (and also the SNOWY region). Both VIC and SA were insulated from the high prices because (at least in part) of the fact that transfers over the SNOVIC interconnector were constrained to minimise negative inter-regional surplus
Second day in a row the price spikes in the NSW region … higher and longer than yesterday. Low aggregate production from Wind and Large Solar across NSW today was clearly one other factor that contributed.
Beginning prior to 7am and progressing through the morning of Wednesday 2nd January 2013, there was significant volatility in the Queensland region of the National Electricity Market – including four spikes at or above $1,000/MWh.
Here’s a walk-through of how it unfolded, with some pointers to some of the contributing factors.
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