Tight supply/demand balance delivers price spike in QLD on Wednesday evening 21st July

For a number of days, the LOR2 and LOR1 Low Reserve Condition forecasts from AEMO have been spamming our inboxes … and this evening we see the early results of a very tight supply-demand balance in QLD, with the (first of many) dispatch price spiking to $13,958.95/MWh in the 17:45 dispatch interval (via our NEMwatch v10.2 upgraded entry-level dashboard:

As noted on the display, the Instantaneous Reserve Plant Margin measure for the QLD ‘Economic Island’ formed by the constrained flows on QNI (and DLINK) give rise to both:

1)  An IRPM of only 7% for the QLD ‘Economic Island’ (quite low) … which is because there is only 629MW of spare capacity in QLD at the moment at any price ; and

2)  There are a number of reasons for this:

(a)  It’s cold for QLD hence demand is up in the yellow zone;

(b)  On the supply side, there are a number of factors, including:

i.  We know that Callide C4 and C3 are still offline;

ii.  That large mass of solar generation that increasingly dominates the middle of the day (3,400MW max today in QLD!) has all gone to bed; and

iii.  No doubt other factors as well.

iv.  On the upside, whilst there are only 2 (large) wind farms operational in the QLD region currently , they have been fairly consistent over the past 12 hours with output up near 400MW (same wind pattern driving apparent temperatures down, and demand up due to space heating).

Maybe more later…