Another day, another “Actual LOR2” Notice for South Australia

Another SMS Alert from NEM-Watch greeted me this morning whilst preparing for work, alerting me to the fact that AEMO had issued another Market Notice talking of the possibility of load shedding in South Australia today if a “credible contingency” event should occur:

To those unfamiliar with these things, the AEMO issues them quite frequently, given the nature of the South Australian region and it’s high level of dependence on the larger Heywood interconnection to Victoria:
1)  The vast majority of times nothing happens (i.e. that “credible contingency” does not occur, the system does not separate, and load shedding does not occur);
2)  However given what happened on 1st December, this type of possibility will be higher on the minds of  a broader range of people.

Fitting, perhaps, that the Energy Ministers meet today (no doubt with this type of challenge on the agenda).

Over on the market side, we see prices in South Australia elevated as a result.  Whilst load shedding is a very rare event – thankfully – the price impacts of these sorts of events are all the more frequent.

Stay tuned for more, over what promises to be an “interesting” summer (hopefully not too much in the vein of that old Chinese blessing).

PS – for readers interested in the “distinct change in the market this year” in terms of pricing that Andrew White quoted me as noting today in the Australian, please see this prior article containing analysis of some remarkable Q2 prices.