Forecasts don’t always pan out but the AEMO’s forecast for Queensland’s Scheduled Demand to exceed 9,000 MW on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday this week has borne out.
The Scheduled demand in Queensland peaked at 9,924 MW at 16:50 this afternoon, 316MW more than yesterday’s peak. While the peak was not as late in the day as Tuesday, as I write this post at 7:30 PM the Scheduled Demand in Queensland is still over 9,400 MW.
While we’re talking about demand …
We have spent some time in the office over the summer months discussing demand. More specifically how are the different demand values that are published calculated and what can be inferred from the different calculations?
Most of these discussions were prompted by the development of the new version of the RenewEconomy Live Supply and Demand widget and how to best represent demand in the NEM. The inclusion of “AEMO Operational Demand” and “Demand the AEMO don’t see” in the widget has prompted some great feedback from the users of the widget and confirmed for us that what demand means is not always clear.
We decided today in our planning meeting that in future when using the term demand in our products or in any form of communication we should always qualify what demand value we are referencing. It might take some time to filter into all of our products but since our goal is to make the energy market clearer the effort will not be wasted.
… AEMO 30 min Operational Demand data in NEMreview v7 and our Trend Editor in ez2view.
The AEMO have been using their Operational Demand value when tweeting about the peak demand in Queensland this week. Prompted by a request from a customer, AEMO Operational Demand data is now available in our trend products, NEMreview v7 and ez2view Trend Editor.
A new peak AEMO Operational Demand of 9,796 MW was set at 17:00 this afternoon which exceeded yesterday’s peak by 301 MW.
Well if you keep adding quarter of a million new consumers into Australia each year and you don’t build anymore base load coal fired power stations there’s a certain inevitability about all this. Well given the low hanging fruit of power efficiency and economising has largely been plucked due to hefty price rises.
… just wait till everyone wants to recharge their electric cars in the evening.
If all Australian cars were converted to EVs they would need an additional appr. 3,000 MW for recharging
Fear Not!!!!. South Australia is showing what a Battery can do to keep things in check.
Yes a 100MW one, that does not produce power obviously but stores it. It actually takes like 10% more power to fill it and then it also has 10% less than finally got into it come out. Thats if its not hot, if its hot, well then it depends on how hot, as to how much can actually come out!!!!!.
Anyway, if you start to think about a battery being used in a peak period of high demand for a long time, its, well actually useless.
In fact the whole setup will actually need power, so its kind of good most the time but in peak times it adds to the demand. Bit of a over sight. However in the real world thats reality.
there is plenty of capacity between 8pm and 6am for EV charging. I have been charging my EV by timer each evening sometime after 8pm for 5.5 years. It’s trivial load shifting and works for everyone as long as their car is topped up by when they need it the next day.
Trivial, until all of brisbane wants to charge their EV at the same time.
Then I doubt the wires that have been run and the transformers that are in place will be enough.
But Thats for the future.
Got to get there first.
Maybe users of EVs can assign control over the timing of their charging to their retailer, the retailer can stagger the charging of EVs through the night so that they don’t get every single EV in Brisbane being switched on at 8pm.
I daresay most people won’t need a full charge every single night.
Fair comment, but there is a LOOOOONG way to go, as we also need to look at heavy EV’s too.
Meaning trucks and buses.
They will need to also be charged.
To replace fossil fuels is going to be a tough gig.
Mind you, Tesla was a leader in wireless energy transfer, so maybe we will not need to charge anything ever, just get charged as we drive.