Looking back at operations at Kogan Creek over the past 20 days

Eight days ago, on Thursday 21st September, we wrote ‘Industrial Action at Kogan Creek Power station part 2 … it starts today, and here’s where to watch live output’.  That article noted several things with respect to the mooted Industrial Action:

1)  It started from Thursday 21st September;

2)  Part of the action would reduce coal stockpiles (by shutting down conveyor belts); and

3)  That ‘Next week …’ (i.e. I am assuming this meant from Monday 25th September) ‘… the union will run the plant at a lower megawatt capacity during peak periods in the morning and at night, degrading power supply.’.

Now, there was a trip that occurred during the week (which appears unrelated to the industrial action) but I was curious to look back and see how markedly operations have changed to date – so I opened up the ‘Bids & Offers’ widget in ez2view this morning, focused on the KPP_1 unit and set the look-back period to 20 days to provide a reasonable amount of historical context.

Here’s the view:

I’ve added some annotations – but particularly looking at ‘before’ and ‘after’ the 21st September (and even from Monday 25th September) you’d need to squint in order to read into the change in output patterns this week (or, importantly, the change in how capacity has been offered) to attribute any change directly to industrial action … at least to this point.

1)  There are a few rebids that removed some capacity but  these have been due to things like ‘mill maintenance’ and (small reductions) due to ‘ambient temperature’ plus ongoing ‘ashing system’ impacts

2)  The latest rebid we can see at this time was submitted at 23:31 Thursday night and referenced ‘Fuel Management-Coal quality-SL’ which perhaps might be as a result of lower coal levels from these actions.

(a)  This removed the capacity offered at $18.84/MWh (at the RRN) from 00:00 to 04:00 this morning (and possibly further, but that’s not visible) …

(b)  … but the same capacity has already been removed from 17:50 to 24:00 on Thursday had already been removed due to ‘ashing system’.

At this point there’s no new updates on the CS Energy News Site.

So we’ll need to keep watch into next week to see anything more clearly …