Not content with leaving South Australia as the only region to see price volatility today, the QLD region contributed some of its own this evening, beginning with $1,001.01/MWh at 18:30 following a 30-minute period above the $300/MWh cap price.
Here’s a snapshot from NEMwatch at 18:40 (NEM time) this evening with the price at the $15,100/MWh Market Price Cap (MPC):
With respect to the numbered annotations on the image:
1) The ‘Market Demand’ in the QLD region had begun to decline, but spiked +60MW from 8,079MW to 8,139MW in this dispatch interval;
2) This spike in demand combined with the constrained imports from NSW…
3) … and the disappeared production from solar (down to 15MW from Large Solar in aggregate as FinalMW for 18:40, and with Small Solar not published at this point but probably quite small).
4) To produce drive the price spike higher.
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Given the increasing tightness forecast through until Thursday this week, I thought this might be a useful marker for what comes next …
Queensland has now cracked $100/MWh as the year-to-date 2021-22 average wholesale electricity price.
To put this in perspective Queensland is around a 50% premium on the NSW wholesale price of $67.94/MWh and nearly 3 times the wholesale price of Victoria and Tasmania ($38.77 and $37.00).
As a consumer advocate we know this is disastrous for small business which are the biggest consumer of grid supplied electricity and the largest employer of Aussies (nearly 5 million Aussies). Affordable electricity is one of the keys to Australia’s Covid19 recovery. Main stream media hasn’t even acknowledged this sad milestone.