Two coal units to watch, in QLD over coming days – in relation to forecast tight supply-demand on Monday 22nd January 2024

This morning (in the article ‘Looking forward, to Monday 22nd January 2024 in Queensland’) I wrote about the forecast LOR2 condition that the AEMO was warning about at the time – looking ahead to Monday 22nd January 2024.

(A)  Forecast LOR conditions cancelled … for now?

Here’s an update (i.e. from 15:35 NEM time) on the ez2view snapshot I included in this morning’s article:

Note in particular that:

1)  The forecast LOR conditions have been cancelled for Monday at this point; and

2)  The forecast ‘Market Demand’ for Monday evening has cooled somewhat, compared to the earlier forecasts.

… though still up in the red zone.

(B)  Two coal units to watch

No doubt the trading rooms that are QLD focused will be keeping an eye on what’s unfolding over the weekend.

Out of interest, here’s the ‘Generator Outages’ widget in ez2view (at 15:00) filtered to just the coal units and sorted with QLD units at the top:

Of particular interest are two units highlighted – and discussed below…

B1)  The Millmerran 1 unit has pushed back an ‘Unplanned Forced Outage’

First one highlighted is the MPP_1 which …

3)  has an ‘Unplanned Forced Outage’ scheduled to start on Monday 29th January

4)  But also noted is that the unit has been running at reduced capacity over the past couple weeks;

5)  And looks like it is set to continue running at reduced capacity through until when it comes offline for an outage.

Opening another copy of the ‘Forecast Convergence’ widget to view the MT PASA DUID Availability data, but focused on the MPP_1 unit, we see the following:

With respect to this window:

6)  As noted on this image, the unit’s short-notice outage has been pushed back a few days till after the high demand (and tight supply-demand balance) days.

(a)  I’ve not looked further, to see if anything visible about the cause (e.g. might be a tube leak?)

(b)  In any case, will be another unit to watch closely …

(c)  Whilst that should (hopefully) be all good, if the unit is operationally challenged for the period it might be that the unfortunate happens and it trips off prior to our during the stressful Monday evening period.

B2)  Tarong unit 2 has recently planned an ‘Unplanned Forced Outage’

Second unit highlighted is the TARONG#2 unit, which …

7)  has an ‘Unplanned Forced Outage’ scheduled to start on Saturday 27th January

In this case, we flip the ‘Forecast Convergence’ widget to view the MT PASA DUID Availability data, but focused on the TARONG#2 unit, we see the following:

As noted on this image:

8)  It was only on the MT PASA DUID Availability run for 18:00 on Wednesday 17th January 2024 that this outage was introduced:

(a)  Again, I’ve not looked further, to see if anything visible about the cause (e.g. might be a tube leak?)

(b)  In any case, will be another unit to watch closely …

Could be interesting times … for a few different reasons (including, but not limited to, these two …)