Price volatility also in NSW on Friday 8th December 2023

Dan’s already posted today about an earlier ‘Run of extreme prices in the SA region on Friday 8th December 2023’.  But it’s worth also noting a price spike in NSW:

1)  At 10:05 to $14,248.59/MWh and

2)  At 14:50 to $10,485.97/MWh, as shown in the following run of price alerts via SMS today:

2023-12-08-SMSalerts-Prices

There’s more we could drill into about the SA volatility, and may do later – but here’s some quick notes about the NSW spikes:

 

(A)  NSW Spike to $10,485.97/MWh at 14:50

Here’s a snapshot from ez2view Time-Travelled back to 14:50 from later this afternoon (i.e. so the data shown shifts to FinalMW, but there’s not yet ‘Next Day Public’ data to see bidding behaviour and so on):

2023-12-08-at-14-50-ez2view-NSW-spike

With respect to the numbered annotations:

1)  Both QNI and Directlink are flowing south, as would be understood by the price differential (i.e. cheap to expensive);

2)  Whereas the VIC1-NSW1 interconnector is being constrained such that it must flow south;

3)  There’s a 247MW aggregate drop in wind output in NSW in this dispatch interval

4)  The contributions to this reduction include:

(a)  Down 107MW at BOCOROCK

(b)  Down 81MW at GULLRGWF (i.e. the three unit station ID)

(c)  Down 46MW at COLWF

These units are all being constrained off as a result of the ‘N::N_UTRV_2’ Constraint Equation (invoked as part of the ‘N-RVYS_2’ Constraint Set due to outage on Ravine to Yass (2) 330kV line), as we can see here in the ‘Constraint Dashboard’ widget for that same dispatch interval:

2023-12-08-at-14-50-ez2view-ConstraintDashboard-NN_UTRV_2

Note that:

1)  the ‘Connection Point Dispatch Price’ (i.e. the CPD Price) is below –$1,000/MWh for all of these units, so they’re wound right down to 0MW.

2)  Eagle eyes will also see that the UPPTUMUT unit has a CPD Price below –$1,000/MWh so might wonder why the unit’s not fully wound down.

(a)  Here’s the ‘Unit Dashboard’ widget for that unit – which is unfortunately limited by what it can show without ‘Next Day Public’ data:

2023-12-08-at-14-50-ez2view-UnitDashboard-TUMUT3

(b)  We see it did drop 40MW over the dispatch interval (439MW to 399MW) so it’s target might have dropped by 40MW, which would equate to a 8MW/min ramp down rate.  Not shown in an image in this article, but clicking back to a point in the prior Market Day shows its bid ROCDOWN rate then was 20MW/min … so

i.  Perhaps this changed for the 14:50 dispatch interval …

… if it was, it would have been a change in the ROCDOWN rate for 14:45 as we see a 112MW ramp down in the dispatch interval (i.e. 22.4MW/min) immediately before?!

ii.  … or perhaps the unit was limited in how it could ramp down by some other parameter (such as co-optimisation for FCAS)?

 

(B)  NSW Spike to $14,248.59/MWh at 10:05

Without any commentary, here’s the earlier spike in the same collage of widgets:

2023-12-08-at-10-05-ez2view-NSW-spike

 

 

(C)  Forecast demand spike for this evening

Also worth noting that we might see NEM-wide ‘Market Demand’ peak above 30,000MW around 17:30 this evening (NEM Time), which would be first time since 24th July 2023.

PS …. here’s where it landed


About the Author

Paul McArdle
Paul was one of the founders of Global-Roam in February 2000. He is currently the CEO of the company and the principal author of WattClarity. Writing for WattClarity has become a natural extension of his work in understanding the electricity market, enabling him to lead the team in developing better software for clients. Before co-founding the company, Paul worked as a Mechanical Engineer for the Queensland Electricity Commission in the early 1990s. He also gained international experience in Japan, the United States, Canada, the UK, and Argentina as part of his ES Cornwall Memorial Scholarship.

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