A quick note today, to highlight the Market Notice alert that we’ve received in our NEMwatch (entry level) and ez2view (higher end) software dashboard packages:
What stands out to me is the forecasts for both Tuesday and Wednesday next week, where hot weather is forecast for both Adelaide and Sydney on the same days.
Without the time to pull up historical data to confirm, I’d just note that this strikes me as possibly relatively rare based on the general sense developed watching the NEM, and the weather patterns that increasingly drive it, over the years. Some of our more know knowledgeable readers (particularly those who are meteorologists) might want to comment?
PS – thanks Rob Davis for adding your own insights in this post on Thursday here.
Intrigued by what that might mean for demand forecast, and understanding that Tuesday (but not yet Wednesday) is covered in the ST PASA time horizon, I opened the pre-prepared online trend in ez2view online (clients can access their own copy here to watch this unfold) and see that AEMO is currently forecasting a peak in Scheduled* Demand above 31,000MW at 17:00 on Tuesday 15th January, with forecast for Operational* Demand up near 31,500MW:
* Readers can delve into the gory details of all the different definitions of demand in this prior explainer here – Scheduled, Operational and more. More complex than one might initially think, unfortunately…
Readers should also be aware that a peak up above 31,000MW (for Scheduled Demand) would still be more than 4,000MW below this massive all-time demand peak reached almost exactly 10 years beforehand, back before all these factors started contributing to declining demand.
I’d ordinarily say something like “I’ll be interested to see what unfolds”, and that would be true – however the next 2 weeks is time planned for a bit of R&R outside the NEM with not many thoughts about the NEM at all to intrude (save for the 1 job I can’t escape, which is to start delving into the large mass of data assembled this week for our Generator Report Card 2018).
Rest assured, however – the rest of the team will watch with interest, and (time permitting) might post more next week about what actually unfolds…
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