AEMO intermittently forecasting LOR2 (Low Reserve Condition) for NSW for Saturday 29th April 2023 – the day after the last Liddell unit is scheduled to close

As noted on Wednesday evening, it’s three down and one to go later today for the closure of all four of the Liddell units.

 One of our team will be along later with an article to mark when LD01 is actually closed.

What jumped out to me this morning, as a bit of a coincidence was the AEMO forecasting LOR2-level Low Reserve Condition for the NSW region for Saturday afternoon in Market Notice 107630 at 06:28 this morning as follows:

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MARKET NOTICE
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From :              AEMO
To   :              NEMITWEB1
Creation Date :     28/04/2023     06:28:16

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Notice ID               :         107630
Notice Type ID          :         RESERVE NOTICE
Notice Type Description :         LRC/LOR1/LOR2/LOR3
Issue Date              :         28/04/2023
External Reference      :         STPASA – Forecast Lack Of Reserve Level 2 (LOR2) in the NSW Region on 29/04/2023

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Reason :

AEMO ELECTRICITY MARKET NOTICE

AEMO declares a Forecast LOR2 condition under clause 4.8.4(b) of the National Electricity Rules for the NSW region for the following period:

From 1400 hrs 29/04/2023 to 1500 hrs 29/04/2023.
The forecast capacity reserve requirement is 1136 MW.
The minimum capacity reserve available is 1081 MW.

AEMO is seeking a market response.

AEMO has not yet estimated the latest time it would need to intervene through an AEMO intervention event.

Manager NEM Real Time Operations

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END OF REPORT
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There’s been a bit of oscillation in these forecasts …

1)  At 23:26 yesterday MN107626 warned of LOR2 from 14:00 to 15:00 on Saturday

2)  This was cancelled at 02:30 this morning in MN107627.

With the oscillations, and general interest in ‘life after Liddell’ I opened up the ‘Forecast Convergence’ widget in ez2view to have a quick look at AEMO’s successive forecasts as follows:

A couple points of background:

1)  There are three copies of the widget side-by-side, all looking out a week (so incorporating P30 predispatch and ST PASA);

2)  From left-to-right we are looking at:

(a)  ‘Demand and Non-Scheduled Generation’ for NSW … which is somewhat similar to ‘Operational Demand’ but a data set the AEMO supports in its P30 and STPASA forecast processes;

(b)  Aggregate ‘Available Generation’ for NSW; and

(c)   Forecast ‘LOR Condition’ for NSW.

2)  Colour coding is typically focused on ‘red is bad and blue is good’

(a)  … but we understand that this is subjective to the individual position of the user;

(b)  see bottom-left of each widget what the scale is

3)  Remember this widget allows you to ‘look up a vertical’ to review ‘that other dimension of time’

With this in mind, we see the alternating orange in the ‘LOR condition’ widget … with Orange being LOR2.  This coincides with a period whereby Available Generation in NSW drops into the red colours (i.e. relatively low levels).  I’ve not checked further to see if we might guesstimate which units might have changed their bid availability into the future to make this happen, but two points are clear:

1)  Liddell unit 1 will already have closed by that time (supposed to close today sometime, last time we looked) … so some might say that this can’t be the cause;

2)  But it also reminds me of what Tony Wood noted in the AFR on Tuesday this week in Mark Ludlow’s article ‘Removal of coal power will put pressure on grid this winter’ … where he is quoted as saying:

“You have to expect unplanned outages of coal-fired power stations will continue. That’s just a fact of life,” Mr Wood told The Australian Financial Review.’

“When you look at individual plants it’s OK, but when you look at the totality of it, it is becoming more difficult. Each time you shut one down, the proportional impact you have on the remaining coal-fired plant fleet is bigger.”

We’ve made that point before, in places like GenInsights21 and GenInsights Quarterly Updates.

Interesting times ahead…