A first look at ‘Market Demand’ in South Australia on Saturday 6th January 2024

There’s been a bit written about ‘the rooftop PV juggernaut’ in the media and on social media in the past week or so.

This was , at least in part, because I used the term in Part 2 of a review of what happened on Sunday 31st December 2023 … and so referenced by Angela Macdonald-Smith in the AFR on 2nd January and then on 3rd January 2024.

One eagle eyed reader this weekend (i.e. a week later) pointed out the following that happened in South Australia yesterday (Saturday 6th January 2024) so I’ve briefly recorded here – using a snapshot from ‘the ‘Forecast Convergence’ widget in ez2view, time-travelled back to 19:00 (NEM time) on Saturday evening:

Per the comments added:

1)  AEMO P30 predispatch forecasts for ‘Market Demand’ in South Australia consistently predicted that the level of demand would remain relatively strong through the afternoon:

(a)  However we see what actually happened is that from 12:30 on the day, the level of demand dropped rapidly through to 16:30, before recovering to 19:00

(b)  I’ve not checked, but presume this was because forecast cloud cover (which would have suppressed rooftop PV and so supported higher level of Grid Demand) did not eventuate.

… perhaps more learned readers can advise on this one?

2)  We also see that, from 16:30 through until 19:00 the level of ‘Market Demand’  grew quite quickly

… again, I have not checked, but perhaps the forecasted cloud cover arrived a little later in the afternoon than forecast?

No time to check anything else …