The hot weather that wilted the spirits of the English cricketers in Perth over the weekend arrived in South Australia today, pushing temperatures in Adelaide up to around 40 degrees, as shown in this snapshot from NEM-Watch today:
We can see in this snapshot from the 14:30 dispatch interval that the scheduled demand in South Australia (2341MW) is only a light shade of green, meaning that it has not significantly lifted out of what might traditionally have been seen as a median level. We also see that demand in Tasmania has plunged to be less than 1000MW, so stuck in the light blue zone down near the bottom of its historical Min/Max range.
All of this contributes to a NEM-Wide demand shown in NEM-Watch to be only 26,111MW – almost 10,000MW below the all-time record set some years ago now.
What will be the peak NEM-wide demand this summer?
Why is the SA price close to $200/MWh, with a much higher spike into the thousands, when the Vic interconnector is running at only half capacity ? Surely the interconnector would curtail the price spikes unless it is at capacity.
It is also surprising that despite the forecasts of hot weather, there was absolutely no output from the Dry Creek gas peaking plant. Most of the peak was supplied from Torrens Island. Surely on days like this the Dry Creek plant would be made ready for production, and be placing bids below the $200/MWh spot price.