No, these were not spurious price spikes in Queensland today

One of our clients contacted us today about six serious (and seemingly spurious) spikes today – each in the latter Dispatch Intervals within the Trading Period in question.

This made us wonder about how many other WattClarity readers and NEM-Watchers out there were asking the same thing – hence this short post.  We actually spoke about this in our extensive review of what happened over the prior summer (2012-13) in Queensland – as noted in one of the pages from the report:

As noted through 2013, this increased incidence does raise the interest (for some) in a revisit of the 5/30 minute determination made by NEMMCO more than a decade ago.

This same pattern of pricing has been going on this week in Queensland (as it was last summer) – as shown in this NEM-Watch snapshot, highlighting the 16:30 price spike to $13,100/MWh:

Rewinding ez2viewAustralia to 17:00 yesterday (Thursday 20th February) we can review another instance of the same instances of price volatility in Queensland – as shown here in this snapshot from the 17:00 dispatch interval, highlighting bid changes, constraints and other parameters of interest.

Whilst ez2view is designed to make the energy market more understandable, it’s important not to jump to conclusions with respect to the data shown here.

For those who would like to understand more, please call us on +61 7 3368 4064