A short article this afternoon to draw attention to the comment posted by ‘Kelse’ on yesterday’s article that drew my attention to this note from the Banana Shire Council about ‘Increased Heavy Vehicle Traffic in the Area’ on 14th April 2022 that says:
‘There will be increased heavy vehicle traffic around Biloela from 13 April 2022 for an anticipated four week period.
Trucks will be carting coal from the Callide Mine to the Millmerran Power Station to address a supply shortage at Millmerran due to recent weather events in Southern Queensland and Northern New South Wales.
Most of the heavy vehicle traffic will be diverted around Biloela however, there may be some congestion experienced depending on traffic conditions.
Residents and visitors are advised to take additional care on the road while the increased traffic is operating in the area.’
That’s a long road trip for a procession of coal trucks!
Curious to see how this had affected the operations at Millmerran, I opened the ‘Bids & Offers’ widget in ez2view and dialled up the most recent 90 days worth of bids for Millmerran unit 2 as follows:
(Unit 1 came out for maintenance at the end of April so it was more easily comparable to just look at one unit.)
In the image above, we can see more cyclic operation at the plant and what may be bidding to conserve coal supplies both before and after 13th April 2022 – and there are numerous rebid reasons listed as ‘Mill/CV*/Feeder limitation’ in the list.
* with CV probably meaning Calorific Value, as a sign of the quality problems being experienced with the coal … both the wet coal from the Millmerran mine, and the different coal arriving from CS Energy’s Callide site.
Something else to keep in mind in the coming weeks…
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Oh, and I’ve also highlighted the lack of times in two columns (Rebid Aware Time and Rebid Decision Time) in the Bid Table above:
1) these fields were marked by AER as highlight recommended, but not mandatory in the upgrade of bidding requirements for Five Minute Settlement and EMMS v5.0 (not 100% sure why?) … and we also noted Rebid Category is not mandatory as well (not sure why?!)
2) As a result, a number of participants choose not to use them
3) In our Generator Statistical Digest 2021 (GSD2021), our automatic logic marked bids like these as ‘Not Well Formed’ as we viewed the highly recommended fields as part of ‘Best Practice’.
Paul – The lack of the non-mandatory rebid fields is probably a very deliberate decision by at least some participants (not saying this applies to Milmerran). What’s the benefit to the participant of populating those fields? If they put data in and are assessed for compliance or something else by the AER they may have to show that the numbers are accurate, which is probably not straightforward in at least some cases – “awareness” and “decisions” can emerge over time, not necessarily in an instant – and they are also on a hiding to nothing if they made any errors or omissions. So strategically it may make very good sense not to provide that data given it’s not required. So perhaps I differ slightly on what’s ‘Best Practice’.
I suspect, Allan (based on the absence of these fields for many DUIDs) that a number of participants have a view similar to yours.