Wafer thin margin Friday evening, NEM-wide [caveat = based on generation bid available for NEMDE pricing/dispatch]

A snapshot of ez2view at 23:45 showing a 3% Instantaneous Reserve Plant Margin* NEM-wide:

Down to only 3% close to midnight – I could almost guarantee that this evening is the lowest it’s ever been on a NEM-wide basis, ever.

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Slight correction … it was the SMS alerts for low IRPM* (which have been beeping all evening) that alerted me to the level of 1.18% spare (i.e. a surplus* of only 274MW) five minutes earlier in the 23:40 dispatch interval – shown here in the ez2view Time-Travelled back to that point:

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*  Caveat/Note … this surplus is based on the volume of generation bid available in the NEMDE dispatch/pricing run – as discussed elsewhere (such as by Allan earlier Friday) this current phase of the ‘2022 Energy Crisis’ we’ve seen an increasing volume of generation both:

(a)  Bid unavailable in the NEMDE dispatch/pricing run (which seems likely, in many cases, to avoid NEMDE running them dry with their scarce energy stored onsite in various forms); but
(b)  Still technically available to generate, whether offered into the NEMDE dispatch/pricing run or not.

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All of those watching (like me) are hoping for very steady hands on the rudders in all of the control rooms across the NEM!

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PS1 Friday evening, shortly afterwards

Thankfully it has started to climb back up from this point…

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PS2 ~10:00 on Saturday 18th June

Readers here might like to read the growing number of comments over here on LinkedIn for more context… particularly questions related to the difference between all capacity bid available and the subset of this capacity bid available for the NEMDE dispatch/pricing run.

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PS3 ~12:30 on Saturday 18th June

To provide more context see the attached snapshot from ‘Bids & Offers’ widget in ez2view v9.4.2.51 looking back 24 hours from the 12:30 dispatch interval:

With the addition of ‘Next Day Public’ data in ez2view we can clearly see how much additional capacity was available for AEMO to call on, but not available in the NEMDE dispatch/pricing run (Allan discussed some of this in his earlier article on Friday afternoon).