Morning burst of volatility across the NEM on Monday 5th August 2024

A short article this morning (with more that might come later as subsequent articles) noting the morning burst of volatility across all 5 regions of the NEM (though less so in QLD and TAS).

Here’s a snapshot of the 07:15 dispatch interval this morning via NEMwatch:

… and here’s a snapshot just over two hours later (at the 09:20 dispatch interval) with the prices just subsided:

Some quick notes…

(A)  An initial list of Contributing factors

Let’s start by noting that there are bound to be more than just the following four factors – but here’s a starting list:

(A1)  Morning peak in demand

In the NEMwatch snapshots we see the typical shape for a morning peak in demand – with the highest point being at 07:55 this morning just under 28,000MW (measuring ‘Market Demand’).  Keep in mind that, whilst that level’s not huge, it does present a ramping requirement which might have been coupled with other factors!

(A2)  Low wind

This morning’s peak in demand has coincided with low wind yield across the NEM (it’s dropped under 1,000MW around 08:30 and is trending lower still).

(A3)  Low solar

It’s winter, so solar does not rise as early as in the summer months – but this has been exacerbated by cloud cover that’s delivered lower yield.   A quick look (image not shown here) at one of our dashboard indicates that Large Solar yield at ~09:30 is perhaps ~2,500MW lower than the equivalent yield in previous days.

The same factor would be at play in rooftop PV … though this should show up in higher ‘Market Demand’ (and i’ve not had time to check).

PS1 … update from Weatherzone on LinkedIn

I noticed this update from Weatherzone on LinkedIn on Monday afternoon:

(A4)  7 (of 44) Coal units out

There are a number of coal units offline at present, as we see in the snapshot from the ‘Generator Outages’ widget in ez2view this morning:

(B)  Watching South Australia … will it pop?

Back On Wednesday 31st July we wrote a warning to ‘Keep an eye on the Cumulative Price … especially in South Australia’.

We see in the later NEMwatch snapshot above that the Cumulative Price in South Australia has risen above $1,000,000 and is over half the way to the Cumulative Price Threshold.