As morning temperatures dropped to the bottom of the range you’d expect for May around much of the market, we saw that the demand in Tasmania had kicked particularly high (into the orange zone) on the back of some chilly temperatures there.
As shown in the following snapshot from NEM-Watch, the demand in the mainland regions is shown in the mid-range (green zones), and even a bit lower in South Australia, where the state capital is seen to have the highest temperature of all. In Tasmania, however, the demand is about 200MW below its all-time peak.
Also shown (in the WEPI for last Friday) was the effects of the price spikes that occurred in South Australia last Friday (reported here that morning).
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.
A quick article to record this large drop in ‘Market Demand’ in TAS, notified to us by the ‘Notifications’ widget in ez2view at 12:00 (NEM time) on Wednesday 12th March 2025.
NSW experienced a record summer demand on Thursday 15th January, driven by high temperatures across the state. The extreme weather experienced in NSW followed the extreme weather that swept across South Australia and Victoria only two days beforehand.
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
2 Commentson "A chilly autumn morning drives demand higher in Tasmania"
Paul, what do you attribute the price spikes in SA to?
Thanks for the question, Peter
That’s something I might answer, in person, on Thursday when we meet at the EUAA conference.
Cheers
Paul