South Australia islanded from the eastern part of the NEM overnight

Posted by Paul McArdle Thursday, December 1 2016 Topic: Summer 2016-17 in the NEM

Awoke this morning to a long stream of price SMS alerts triggered overnight for South Australia (and other particular keyword alerts for Market Notices, etc) due to the islanding event overnight.

Here’s a quickly annotated snapshot from NEM-Watch this morning:

NEM-Watch highlighting the islanding of South Australia overnight

Rough sequence of events:

0:16 NEM time SA is islanded.  The flow and import/export limits drop to zero.  In a very quick scan I can’t actually find what causes this to happen.
Immediately, constraint equations act to “constrain up” already operational units at Torrens and Quarantine in order that they can start to make up the power lost over the interconnect.  Prices spike to $14,000/MWh

Peakers take longer to start up and cut in.
02:34 AEMO notes that they have started directing participants.  have not looked further at what happened here.
05:02 AEMO notes that they have stopped directing participants.

Note that immediately prior to the separation, Victoria had been exporting to South Australia with prices in South Australia up around $300/MWh (not much wind blowing in South Australia, and obviously no solar overnight, leading to gas generators running to meet demand).

These generators were then able to ramp quickly to match the load lost from Victoria when those imports were no longer available.

Does not look like any load lost, thankfully…

Investigations and a formal report will follow.

Tags:

SHARE ON LINKEDIN SHARE ON TWITTER SHARE ON FACEBOOK

About the Author

Paul McArdle
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.

Related Articles

2 Comments on "South Australia islanded from the eastern part of the NEM overnight"

  1. Kieran D | Thursday, December 1 2016 at 10:04 am | Reply

    Paul, AEMO media release can be found here with a little more detail:
    http://www.aemo.com.au/Media-Centre/Media-statement—South-Australia

  2. Paul McArdle | Thursday, December 1 2016 at 8:56 pm | Reply

    As a PS to my early morning article, I realise I made a mistake in commenting that no load was lost.

    Here’s a few other articles that provide more details:

    1) Loss of load at (at least one) major C&I customer:
    http://www.afr.com/business/energy/bhp-billiton-ceo-andrew-mackenzie-raises-job-fears-after-new-power-blackout-20161130-gt1gtn

    2) Another perspective:
    http://reneweconomy.com.au/vic-network-fault-causes-outages-in-south-australia-conservatives-blame-renewables-84808/

    3) Of course the AEMO report, noted by Kieran above.

10 Trackbacks & Pingbacks

  1. Network fault causes outages in South Australia, Portland smelter : Renew Economy
  2. Another day, another “Actual LOR2” Notice for South Australia | WattClarity
  3. Forecasting is a Mug’s Game | WattClarity
  4. What’s going on with Victorian electricity demand? | WattClarity
  5. Load Shedding occurs in South Australia in heatwave conditions | WattClarity
  6. Collective skittishness about South Australia? | WattClarity
  7. [UPDATED] AEMO Market Notice on “High Impact Outage” for tomorrow – and possible effect in South Australia | WattClarity
  8. With the closure of Hazelwood looming, hedge contract prices climb skywards | WattClarity
  9. On batteries, and “fixing South Australia’s problems” | WattClarity
  10. 13 headline questions and observations following the long-term islanding, starting Friday 31st January 2020 – WattClarity

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published.


*