With many stakeholders nervously looking on this afternoon, demand in NSW peaked at 14,108MW at 5:30pm AEDT. The eventual peak fell well short from breaking the record of 14,649MW for the state which we noted in our first, second, third and fourth updates on the situation today.
Update 6:30pm (thanks to Allan O’Neil for these additional insights):
Cuts at the Tomago Aluminium Smelter, which at first glance look to be about 310 MW (one potline out of three, with shedding rotating across the three potlines sequentially) certainly kept demand down. However the system was hit just before then with what looks like failure of a 400 MW generator at around 5:20pm, and it appears that additional load shedding then began at 6:00pm – at this stage it is not clear whether this is general customer load or perhaps additional potlines at Tomago.
Time permitting, deeper analysis into today’s events will be posted over the coming week.
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