A quick note with a snapshot from ez2view at the 13:20 dispatch interval (NEM time) highlighting prices at the Market Price Cap in VIC and TAS:
One significant contributing factor is what appears to be a simultaneous trip of all 4 x Loy Yang A units … though note that there may be other factors as well (there was a large drop in VIC ‘Market Demand’, for instance).
PS1 … note that the Loy Yang A trip is most likely *not* the cause
For the avoidance of doubt, in case there are others (like Tim Buckley here) who seem to have misinterpreted what I have noted above to point the finger of ‘blame’ at coal-fired power …
In the same way that the SA System Black was initiated by transmission system failure – which then cascaded through a series of faults (including wind farm trips, but also more) to system black, the problems today in Victoria appear to have been initiated by transmission system failure (as Linton notes here).
it’s 2024… how do we still have these coal power plants running!?
Because we can’t rely on distributed renewables as the transmission network is a weak point