On Thursday night last week (coincidentally whilst in Melbourne for activities in the battery storage space) I noticed the news commentary about the planned strike at Loy Yang A, so posted this quick first article.
UPDATE ON THE FOLLOWING
These Market Notices were cancelled by AEMO at 22:00 on Monday 8th May
Back in Brisbane this week, I had planned to have more of a look at how the week unfolded – so was not really surprised to see the way NEM-Watch looked at 12:05 today:
Key point highlighted on this image are the 2 warnings published by AEMO on Sunday evening, warning of load shedding in both Victoria and South Australia in the evening of Thursday 11th May. I meant to post more earlier, but have hardly been in the office.
Given the late time this evening, it’s no surprise that Sunday’s warnings have been superseded with the following warnings for both Victoria and South Australia, published at 16:00 today (Monday) – and pertain to Thursday 11th May, and also considerably larger on Monday 15th May:
1) Load shedding forecast for Victoria
Starting with Victoria, we see some (relatively minor) load shedding forecast for Thursday 11th May, in the morning and the evening – but (now that the ST PASA window spans out till next week) we also see massive load shedding forecast for the evening of Monday 15th May:
As noted on this image for Victoria, the amount of load shedding forecast for Victoria on Monday evening would equate to more than 10% of the entire demand of Melbourne.
2) Load shedding forecast for South Australia
In South Australia, we see load shedding forecast to coincide with the same days – but next Monday morning (not evening, as in Victoria):
More challenging times ahead, in what is proving to be a very, very rocky energy transition (one which, it seems to me, has been made much rockier than it needed to be by act and by omission by a number of different stakeholders, including those at both ends of the Emotion-o-meter – more on my sense of the “Root Causes”, and potential way forward, later….)
[UPDATE] 3) Supply-side contributions in Victoria
Powering up ez2view (the higher-end tool) we can look in considerably more detail at a wide variety of AEMO (and other) data – and I have included two particular snapshots from the “Forecast Convergence” widget focused on AEMO’s forecast for the Victorian region out over the coming week:
3a) Forecasts for Available Generation (of Scheduled capacity)
In the first grid view, we see a forecast of aggregate generation ability provided by all generators in Victoria which are required to submit bids through the ST PASA process (i.e. this is the traditional generation plant). Out this far we don’t know their bid prices, but we can see what’s available.
As can be seen, what we assume as the planned shut-down of the Loy Yang A station from 10th May (i.e. earlier than the strike action slated for 15th May) stands out like a sore thumb.
3b) Forecasts for Wind Output (Semi-Scheduled and Non-Scheduled)
In the second grid, ez2view has performed a slightly more complex query to show what the AEMO is currently forecasting to be the aggregate output of all the wind farms across Victoria.
Unfortunately, we see that (unlike Saturday 6th May, when the wind output was relatively high), we’ve entered a “doldrums week” where the contribution from wind looks set to be fairly low all week (thankfully climbing out of the deep blue next Monday 15th in the current forecasts).
3c) Neither Thermal nor Wind are seen to shine
Hence we see that neither aggregate wind nor selected thermal plant are covering themselves in glory in this set of forecasts…
If readers are wondering why it’s such an industrial rocky road.
FairWork is broken when it comes to industrial relations and essential service workers, and it is this reason that it is likely to get worse as time goes on. Unless there is a mechanism to deal with scenarios where a company fails to negotiate in good faith then terminates agreements then threatens to lock out workers, therefore effecting 3rd parties at their industrial whim, it will likely escalate on both sides.
MrCyberdude