Bouldercombe BESS charges for 2 hours at 5MW on Friday 3rd November 2023

Yesterday afternoon/evening I received a series of alerts from ez2view notifying me that there was some activity at Bouldercombe Battery again for 2 hours.

Remembering my role in inadvertently misleading a broader audience last time, I thought I’d wait till ‘next day public’ bid data was available, in order to be able to see more.

So here we are on Saturday …

(A)  A quick look in ez2view

Here’s a quick snapshot from ez2view containing two different copies of the ‘Bids & offers’ widget filtered down to both sides of the Bouldercombe Battery station ID:

1)  The supply-side DUID is on top, and shows a very brief and small blip in output on Friday afternoon/evening.

2)  The consumption-side DUID is on the bottom, and shows a 2-hour run of charging at ~5MW supported by bids to consume at up to $1,000/MWh at the QLD RRN:

You can gain more insight in the image itself:

So in summary, it was brief and small (only 10% of its 50MW Maximum Capacity) and controlled.

(B)  A related announcement from Genex Power

Also remembering the reminder from others to watch the ASX updates from the company, I did find this 3-page ASX Release ‘Bouldercombe battery Project – Commissioning Update’ on Monday 30th October 2023:

You can read the full copy of the announcement above, but I thought it would be useful to highlight the following…

‘Tesla has been undertaking preliminary root cause analysis (RCA) via remote diagnostics since the time of the event.  On 13 October 2023 the affected Megapack was transported to a testing facility in Melbourne to complete further RCA via physical inspection, which has now concluded.’

and

‘Concurrent with Tesla’s remediation works, Genex and its contractors are now preparing the site for re-energisation to complete the final commissioning tests and the commence operations … ’

and

‘Out of caution, the final tests and operations will therefore recommence utilising 38 of the 40 Megapack units.  This final commissioning is expected to be completed and operations to commence by mid-November 2023.’

You can read the document for more, but this helps explain the charging yesterday evening (4 days after the ASX Announcement).