190 minutes of low IRPM (reaching 11.01% at 18:05) on Thursday evening 20th June 2024

The run of SMS alerts is continuing as I type this, but the NEM-wide IRPM has turned the corner and started slowly creeping upwards – hence I’ll take a bet and post this snapshot here from NEMwatch at the 18:05 dispatch interval:

At this point:

1)  the IRPM was 11.01%, which was the lowest point (thus far) this evening.

2)  it is also:

(a)  lower than Monday 17th June and Wednesday 19th June;

(b)  but not quite as low as on Tuesday 18th June .

3)  but also not quite as low as forecast to be earlier.

Evening ‘Market Demand’ is high, again

Here’s the same tabular run as seen before:

in this table we’ve highlighted how:

1)   The 18:05 dispatch interval saw the lowest IRPM (11.01%), at least thus far this evening.

2)  the 18:00 dispatch interval saw ‘Market Demand’ (31,896MW) reach the highest point … at least thus far this evening.

Low wind output, again

Also noting that the aggregate wind yield has dropped to 933MW (or 8.12% capacity factor), as shown in this time-travelled snapshot … keep in mind that we’re in the current day, so won’t know if there is any curtailment in this query at this time:

15% of existing coal units offline

Remember that there are also 7 out of 44 coal units offline at present:

 1)  As noted this afternoon, Kogan Creek came offline this morning.

2)  As noted on Tuesday 18th June, ‘Mt Piper unit 1 offline till Monday 24th June with boiler tube leak’

3)  Following this update on the 14th June (6 days ago)  we still have ER04, CPP4 and TNPS1 are all still offline

4)  Plus planned outages on YWPS1 and GSTONE4

Gas supply issues

Don’t forget that gas supply issues are having an impact, as well.

Other factors

Have not specifically looked for other factors…

PS1 a full spell of 160 minutes

The first dispatch interval to see IRPM down below 15%, hence triggering an SMS alert, was for 17:25 and the last dispatch interval was 20:30 … hence a time range from 17:20 to 20:30 (or 190 minutes) of tight supply-demand balance NEM-wide, by that measure.