It’s my first day back in the office after some time on leave, and then travelling for work – and I’m hoping to find some time to review what’s been happening in the market the past couple weeks.
But I thought I’d first take a quick look at Eraring unit 3, given it was the focus of Colin Packham’s article yesterday ‘NSW’s largest coal power station suffers fresh delays ahead of hot weather return’ in the Australian. Utilising three widgets in ez2view, we see the following…
(A) Looking at changing outage plans
Firstly, let’s use the ‘Forecast Convergence’ widget at 08:55 (NEM time) on Thursday 5th December 2024 to take a look at how the outage plans have changed somewhat over time:
Remember that this widget allows one to ‘look up a vertical’ in order to see ‘that other dimension of time’.
In this case we’re looking at the MT PASA DUID Availability data set, filtered down just to the ER03 unit and zoomed into ‘more recent’ periods (i.e. not the full 3 year + year window now possible following the extension to the data set).
We see that:
1) This was a planned outage on the agenda for ~18 months
2) But there were some modifications to plans closer to the outage date:
(a) It came off early
… we noted on 26th August 2024 that ‘Eraring Unit 3 offline for planned outage … but no more outages planned for Eraring through to 2027 (yet?)’
(b) The outage was prolonged.
i. First extension was announced in June 2024, with the planned RTS extended (from 22nd October) to 11th November;
… we’ve not explored why that was the case – it could be for various reasons, including personnel or plant
ii. Then in early October there was a second extension announced – with the planned RTS shifted back to 28th November;
iii. In recent days More recently there’s been the wobbles that Colin mentions in his article.
(B) Current outage plans
Utilising the ‘Generator Outages’ widget at 09:05 (NEM time) on Thursday 5th December 2024, we show the state of outage plans across the 44 x remaining coal units in the NEM:
It looks like:
1) In the data shown in this widget, we see ER03 is expected to be back on Sunday 8th if not sooner…
… we note in Colin’s article he says:
‘The unit was initially scheduled to return on November 27, but suffered a delay as works were then set to be finished on November 29. But work continued until this week when, on Tuesday, the unit was restarted. But the unit was then taken offline again just hours later, and a spokeswoman for the company said the company now expects it to be online at the end of the week.
“We continue to work through the return to service process for unit 3, which is expected to be back online on Friday, December 6.” the spokeswoman told The Australian.’
2) We also see (looking to the right of the ‘today’ columns) that:
(a) There are two lingering planned outages still to finish in QLD
(b) And three planned outages in VIC
… including a lengthy plant improvement outage for YWPS4 as part of the rectification process after the poor performance of 2022 (note that this planned ‘performance improvement’ outage for YWPS4 was noted in April 2024 in this article at the time).
(C) Unit outage reason
We also note in Colin’s article he says:
‘… She did not disclose the reason for the delay’
In the ‘Bids & Offers’ widget 09:10 (NEM time) on Thursday 5th December 2024
In two rebids in the afternoon of Tuesday 3rd December 2024, we see that the unit came offline because of ‘seal failure’.
Nothing further, at this point…
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