Sorry to see the system go black (i.e. blackout) in South Australia this afternoon – as seen in NEM-Watch:
The market’s been suspended in South Australia currently whilst AEMO focuses on getting power back on – hence don’t pay much regard to the prices at present.
(a) Suffice to say not good.
(b) Cue the claims and counter-claims in the days to come at both ends of the Emotion-o-Meter.
For now, all our thoughts should be on those without power – and to the stressed electricity industry workers (AEMO, ElectraNet, SA Power Networks, the Generators and others) trying to get it back ASAP…
This can’t be due to insufficient capacity at this time of year, maybe loss of a frequency control unit, not enough synchronous capacity available to deal with that, maybe due to some being offline at a time of plentiful wind power?