Industrial Action at Kogan Creek Power station part 2 … it starts today, and here’s where to watch live output

On Tuesday this week we posted ‘Current outage plans for Kogan Creek – with threats of industrial action’ (referencing firstly the AFR and then the Australian) about the looming industrial action at CS Energy’s Kogan Creek power station.

This morning I’ve noticed the article ‘Workers to strike at Kogan Creek power plant’ written by Duncan Evans on Monday 18th September that contained more details.  In particular, here’s three specific pieces of information, which I have highlighted …

‘Mining and Energy Union workers will pursue industrial action at the Kogan Creek plant west of Brisbane from Thursday, putting at risk 10 per cent of Queensland’s power generation capacity.’

and then

‘Mr Brunker said the union would start off by shutting down conveyor belts feeding coal from the nearby Kogan mine into the plant, which would reduce the station’s available coal stocks.’

and then

‘Next week, the union will run the plant at a lower megawatt capacity during peak periods in the morning and at night, degrading power supply.’

(A)  Watching Kogan’s output in real time

Whilst the Energy Minister and others have issued statements reassuring the public that there’s low risk of any disruptions to the supply-demand balance in the near term, it’s understandable that some will want to

That’s why we’ve taken some time this morning to put together a live updating trend containing three key pieces of data:

1)  Key statistics for Kogan Creek:

(a)  Data that updates in real time is the ‘FinalMW’ (which is the metered output at the end of the prior dispatch interval … or InitialMW for the start of the current dispatch interval);

(b)  Data that is ‘next day public’ and fills in for the prior market day at 04:00 each day (being Available Generation and Target)

2)  QLD Spot Price for ENERGY (I’ve not included the prices for each FCAS commodity)

3)  The QLD region IRPM.

Might be useful for some readers here?

(A1)  Live updating dashboard

This is now published here:

https://dashboards.global-roam.com/#/

(You should be able to access, if you register an account there)

(A2)  Brief explanation

Here’s a static view as at 08:53 (i.e. looking at the 08:55 dispatch interval) on Thursday 21st September 2023:

The IRPM calculation (i.e. Instantaneous Reserve Plant Margin) is what you might want to watch, to see how tight the supply-demand balance is:

1)  Low numbers signify increasing tightness (though it’s not really till under 15% that there’s typically any price response);

2)  It’s what is shown in NEMwatch* and occasionally features in articles on WattClarity;

* but in that software is only shown when transfers between QLD and NSW are constrained, so QLD then reverts to an ‘Economic Island’.

3)  In the trend above it’s visible for all dispatch intervals, so keep in mind that some of these dispatch intervals the interconnectors will be unconstrained and so QLD might be able to draw in more power from NSW.

(B)  Comment from CS Energy

Out of curiosity, I jumped onto the CS Energy News Site and see the following:

1)  On Monday 18th September 2023 they had released this ‘Statement on Kogan Creek Planned Industrial Action’ ;

2)  There was also an earlier ‘Statement on Kogan Creek Power Station Enterprise Agreement Negotiations’ on 31st August 2023.