Earlier today (Friday 7th November 2025) we saw something strange in our display of the ‘Generator Outages’ widget from ez2view with respect to the Waratah BESS, as a result of which:
1) We posted the article ‘What’s up with Waratah BESS (unplanned outage till 3rd May 2026)?’;
2) Following from which we started conversations with a range of different people – including:
(a) Some people we know at Akaysha Energy, the owner/operator of the battery;
(b) But also with a range of other knowledgeable NEM (and battery) stakeholders we though might help us answer some of the questions that data posed for us.
From these conversations came more information (and some more questions as well), as a result of which we’re publishing a few more articles* separately to follow on. This is one of those articles.
* There are several reasons for there being separate articles, including:
1) Because the 4pm (NEM time) newsletter for today has already triggered, so we wanted to ensure that our readers are aware of these additional pieces of information … hence the discrete articles
2) But it’s also likely that it will be useful to link directly into some of them at different points in time.
Relevant to the questions above, we belatedly note now that it was back on Friday 29th August 2025 that the AER published its PASA Compliance Bulletin and Checklist.
AER’s new ‘PASA Compliance Bulletin’ and ‘PASA Compliance Checklist’
This was communicated via this page, which:
1) Clarified that:
‘The PASA Compliance Bulletin replaces existing messaging regarding PASA obligations outlined in the AER’s NEM Readiness Guide and is a standalone guidance document relating to PASA. ’
2) and listed two documents that could be downloaded – as referenced in here as a service to our readers:
| PASA Compliance Bulletin | PASA Compliance Bulletin |
|---|---|
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The 19-page Compliance Bulletin can be downloaded here:
Happy reading! |
The 2-page Compliance Checklist can be downloaded here:
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So what did these say about SIPS derating?
The application of SIPS deratings into MT PASA DUID Availability data sets is something of particular interest to us currently, so we wonder what these documents have to say about this?
| PASA Compliance Bulletin | PASA Compliance Bulletin |
|---|---|
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On page 15/19 of the Compliance Bulletin (numbered p12) there is the following passage relating to SIPS: ‘We recognise that some participants with batteries have entered System Integrity Protection Scheme (SIPS) reserve contracts with AEMO over various periods. Where such a contract is in place, participants may reflect SIPS reserve capacity in PASA availability submissions as follows: • for MT PASA – bid capacity excluding the SIPS reserve capacity, so that this is reflecting the supply condition available to the market more accurately • for ST PASA – bid capacity including the SIPS reserve capacity, so this reflects capacity available to AEMO for direction.’
Note the difference between the approach required for ST PASA and MT PASA … which will help answer some of our confusion in the earlier article. |
The checklist just includes the following reference to the NER: ‘Clause 3.7.2(d)(1) – PASA availability in MT PASA Clause 3.7.2(d)(1) requires a Market Participant to submit PASA availability for each day taking into account the ambient weather conditions forecast at the time of the 10% probability of exceedance peak load for (i) a 36-month period for each scheduled generating unit and scheduled bidirectional unit and for (ii) a 24-month period for each scheduled load or scheduled network service. These submissions should be made in the manner described in AEMO’s MT PASA Process Description (v6.4 from 24th April 2023 here) and the Reliability Standard Implementation Guidelines (RSIG) … v3.3 from 23rd October 2025 here.’ … but nothing specific about the SIPS.
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So that’s where we’ll leave this article …
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