A short note on Thursday 11th July 2024 with this snapshot from ‘Bids & Offers’ widget in ez2view focused in on the ‘TVCC201’ DUID, which represents the combined-cycle unit at Tamar Valley:
With a 60-day lookback we can see the commencement of output (after a 5 year hiatus) on the afternoon of 6th June 2024, which is 5 weeks ago today. Since that time, we see that:
1) The unit has been bid below $0/MWh for almost the entire period; and
2) As a result, has been dispatched to run up to its maximum capacity (of 208MW) almost continuously across that period.
This article follows the note on 13th June (4 weeks ago) that ‘Gas-fired generation running more strongly in TAS (and Tamar Valley CCGT for the first time) than it has over the past 5 years’.
Important for readers to note that (despite these efforts + gas peakers also, and the current boost of production from Tassie wind farms currently, and imports from VIC over Basslink), hydro levels (as manually updated in NEMwatch every few days) are still showing an aggregate hydro storage level of only 31% full at present:
To me this is a reminder of the emerging challenges discussed as ‘the rise of Just in Time’ as Key Observation 5/22 within GenInsights21 a couple years ago now…
I’m curious how the logistics of firing up for the first time in 5 years works. Do they have to start by hiring in engineering and operational staff on temporary seasonal contracts?
Running a CC gas plant continuously and using hydro as the swing ends up using much less gas than running gas peakers