‘Market Demand’ in Queensland peaks at 9,790MW on Thursday 18th January 2024 … Monday 22nd Jan *might* see a record?

At ~15:40 today we posted ‘Demand (and price) spiking in QLD on Thursday afternoon 18th Jan 2024’ … at the time expecting QLD’s Demand to climb higher and hence (combined with declining Available Generation and constrained imports from NSW) drive some evening volatility.

(A)  Where did demand peak?

As it stands (at the 18:00 dispatch interval) it looks like the ‘Market Demand’ might have peaked at 9,790MW in the 16:30 dispatch interval.  Here’s two sequential views of the ‘Forecast Convergence’ widget* in ez2view, Time-Travelled back to two different points in time, looking at ‘Market Demand’ in Queensland:

* Remember that this widget allows one to ‘look up a vertical’ to see ‘that other dimension of time’.

(A1)  Time-Travelled to 16:30

Here’s the first snapshot:

We see:

1)  At the top of the ‘now’ column, the ‘Market Demand’ landed at 9,790MW.

2)  Looking down that column (i.e. backwards in time, to earlier P5 predispatch forecasts) we see earlier forecasts had been that demand would have been higher.

3)  Looking out to the right (i.e. into the future, with the ‘current’ P5 predispatch forecast) we see that the forecast was that the demand might get as high as 10,014MW by 17:25 (i.e. in 55 minutes from ‘now’).

(A2)  Time-Travelled to 17:25

So out of curiosity we open another copy of the widget, and wind that new window forward to 17:25:

With this window we see:

4)  Looking up the vertical (i.e. from the earlier forecast for 17:25 through until reality) we see the expectations for ‘Market Demand’ progressively cooled … so landing at 9,672MW at 17:25 (342MW below the earliest P5 forecast, and remembering howthe P30 forecasts are not directly comparable – not least of which because of tripwire #1 and tripwire #2 ).

5)  Looking out to the right (i.e. into the future from 17:25) we see the forecasts for periods after that also progressively cooled.

(B)  Looking ahead, over the coming days

Two days ago (on Tue 16th Jan 2024) we’d noted (in the article ‘Forecast temperature rising in Queensland for Thu 18th Jan 2024 (and Fri 19th and Mon 22nd)’) that demand levels were expected to be higher still on Friday 19th January (i.e. now tomorrow) and Monday 22nd January.   So I wondered what might be visible in that updated 14-day overview from ez2view online:

Readers with their own licence to the ez2view software can open their own copy of this query in a browser here.

As noted on this chart…

6)  Highlighted on the chart is quite a sharp drop in Air Temperature at Archerfield (a better proxy for airconditioning load than temperature at Brisbane airport).

7)  The current forecast for ‘Market Demand’ for tomorrow evening (Fri 19th Jan) is that it will be slightly lower than what was achieved today

(a)  Note that this is coming from the P30 predispatch run

(b)  Current forecast peak is WHAT at WHEN

8)  But the current forecast shows that ‘Market Demand’ for Monday 22nd Jan could be a doozy:

(a)  Remembering this is coming from ST PASA (i.e. further out);

(b)  The mouse-over shows 10,372MW forecast for WHEN;

(c)  Which would (if it eventuated … remembering the uncertainty involved!) would be a new all-time record.

(d)  Keeping in mind that the all-time record (by that measure) currently sits at 10,119MW … set for the dispatch interval ending 17:30 on Tuesday 8th March 2022.

Stay tuned …

PS1 – volatility Thursday evening

For completeness I’ve attached record of the SMS alerts received on Thursday evening (triggered by ez2view when any region’s spot price elevated above $1,000/MWh):

Nothing further to add…