South Australia islanded again – Monday 2nd March at 12:00

A quick note to record that – in this ongoing ‘accelerated accidental experiment’ that’s occurred with the transmission damage in western Victoria that is not yet fixed (it’s only a ‘temporary fix’ in place whilst towers and flow path are rebuilt), we see that South Australia has been islanded again this afternoon.

At 12:22 the AEMO published Market Notice 74613 to note the following:

________________________________________________________________________________________________

Notice ID            74613
Notice Type ID        Emergency events/conditions
Notice Type Description    MARKET
Issue Date            Monday, 2 March 2020
External Reference        Separation of the Victorian and South Australian Regions 02 Mar 2020
________________________________________________________________________________________________

AEMO ELECTRICITY MARKET NOTICE.

POWER SYSTEM EMERGENCY CONDITIONS

Separation of the Victorian and South Australian Regions 02 Mar 2020

At 1200 hrs the Victorian and South Australian regions separated at Heywood Terminal.

The following Constaint sets were invoked to manage the situation from 1215 hrs

F-ESTN_ISLE
F-SA_ESTN_ISLE_REG
F-SA_MOPS_ISLE
SA_ESTN_ISLE

Manager NEM Real Time Operations

… and here’s a snapshot of prices in the 14:05 dispatch interval in ez2view in with the South Australian dispatch price for Energy at the Market Price Cap as a result of the islanding (also high at 13:55 and 14:00):

Note also that the dispatch price for Raise Contingency (6-second and 60-second) FCAS is sky-high, as also for Lower Contingency (60-second) – meaning that Allan’s admonition to ‘don’t forget about FCAS’ and Jonathon’s reminder that ‘FCAS matters – more than ever’ are both ringing in our ears!

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Note – whilst this has been happening this afternoon I have been trying to finish off a more detailed review of some of what happened in the period 31st January 2020 through until 17th February 2020  …. the ‘first burst’ of islanding stemming from that storm.   Hopefully can publish that review here tomorrow!

Separately, I hope Allan O’Neil might have time to review what happened today and publish that tomorrow…