Catching up on a few tasks overhanging the holiday weeks, we noted how the spot price in South Australia dropped below zero (and almost did the same in Victoria) on an Anzac Day with low demand coinciding with high wind production levels.
Above, for future reference, is a snapshot of the incident in NEM-Watch v9.
Note (highlighted) the significant drop in demand in the Victorian region which contributed to the drop in prices in both regions.
Paul was one of the founders of Global-Roam in February 2000. He is currently the CEO of the company and the principal author of WattClarity. Writing for WattClarity has become a natural extension of his work in understanding the electricity market, enabling him to lead the team in developing better software for clients.
Before co-founding the company, Paul worked as a Mechanical Engineer for the Queensland Electricity Commission in the early 1990s. He also gained international experience in Japan, the United States, Canada, the UK, and Argentina as part of his ES Cornwall Memorial Scholarship.
Guest author Allan O’Neil provides this handy explainer on how generators’ contract positions affect their bidding decisions and can make negative spot prices pay off, at least in the short term. Very useful for those readers not actively involved in wholesale trading in helping to understand why some conspiracy theories might not match reality.
This is the 3rd of 4 Case Studies to follow on from the main article (summarising results across 105,120 dispatch intervals through 2019 for ‘all Coal’ and ‘all Wind’ groupings). In this case, let’s look at the ‘worst’ case, in aggregate, where wind units under-performed compared to dispatch targets.
Be the first to comment on "Spot price drops below zero in SA on a windy day with low demand"