April 2008

“Power Prices Jump in Eye of the Storm”, from the AFR

Following from an alert to the situation provided by NEM-Watch, Duncan Hughes published an article “Power Price Jump in Eye of the Storm” that mentioned the extremely low levels of NEM-Wide Instantaneous Reserve Plant Margin (IRPM) that had occurred for a 60-minute period over both days.


Cost of congestion to energy users

For the EUAA’s Members Meeting (held in Brisbane on 24th April 2008), our Managing Director was invited to provide of a précis of the presentation he previously provided at the “QLD Energy” conference (on 12th March 2008).

In particular, comments made by Paul with respect to the proposed upgrade to QNI – which was topical at the time of the conference, given that Powerlink and TransGrid had released their analysis of several upgrade options in the same week as the conference.

As a result of the presentation, Duncan Hughes wrote an article about the potential cost to energy users of the upgrade, and published this in the Australian Financial Review on 13th March 2008.

Given the magnitude of the numbers reported, this issue has proved to be of significant issue to large energy users – hence the invitation to present at the Member’s Meeting.



Links to external reports relating to the blackout

Following from the blackout, several government bodies, and industry organisations completed reviews of the events leading up to the blackout. For completeness, these reports (at least, those we are aware of) have been listed in this article.