As I noted back on 23rd December, we’ve no time to run the usual competition this summer (2016-17). Less time to do the normal amount of NEM-watching as well, or posting longer commentary here on WattClarity.
I did notice today with the temperatures rising in NSW that the demand had awoken from its green zone slumber and was climbing towards the orange zone – as I noted in this tweet of an annotated NEM-Watch screenshot:
At that time (13:15 NEM time, so 14:15 in Sydney) the Scheduled Demand was up at 12,550MW. I also noted on the snapshot that the “Native Demand” more what the layperson might think of as consumption would have been something like 13,850MW, which would still be below the all-time record set on 1st February 2011 as recorded here (back at that time there was no solar PV to speak of, and little wind – hence “Scheduled Demand” would have been much closer to “Native Demand”).
Only 50 minutes later, we see that the Scheduled Demand had risen to 12,794MW (at 14:05) – so showing a more orange colour. One of the reasons for this will be the accelerating fading of small-scale solar injections into the afternoon:
In general terms, crude feed-in-tariff incentives have been for households to install solar PV on north facing rooftops (to maximise kWh yield) rather than west facing rooftops (which would yield more network benefits at times or peak loading, in most cases). As such, this “duck curve” effect is seen to begin waning in early afternoon.
At 14:50 (the time of posting) the NSW Scheduled Demand had risen to 12,840MW.
PS it’s also noteworthy that the demand in QLD was also up in the orange zone (QLD demand up to 8,440MW at 14:50), though this has been a much more common occurrence of late (and also because of the “less peaky” demand shape exhibited in the region).
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