NEM-wide ‘Market Demand’ peaks at 33,674MW at 17:30 on Monday 16th December 2024

Another short article on Monday 16th December 2024* to note that the NEM-wide demand did peak at 33,674MW in the 17:30 dispatch interval (NEM time), when measured as ‘Market Demand’.

*… and noting that Dan Lee has also posted a similar note a couple minutes earlier here (but retaining this one also, for added context)

… this correlates quite well with the AEMO forecast in ST PASA early on Friday afternoon last week:

(a)  when we wrote that ‘NEM-wide demand on Monday 16th December forecast to be highest in almost 4 years’.

(b)  at that time the forecast was that it would be 33,718MW in the half-hour ending 18:00 (NEM time),

(c)  so only 44MW lower, and 30 minutes earlier, than forecasts 3 days prior!

… take a bow, AEMO operational forecasting!

(d)  Of course that also still means NEM-wide ‘Market Demand’ was actually highest since 31st January 2020 (a very stressful day in the NEM).

Here’s a snapshot from NEMwatch at the 18:10 dispatch interval (NEM time), when the NEM-wide ‘Market Demand’ was at 33,478MW:

From this we can make a number of other observations:

1)  Both NSW and VIC region demand are elevated out of the ‘green zone’ (i.e. mid-range compared to historical range) … but neither are sky-high.

2)  With respect to IRPM for some ‘Economic Islands’ we see alerts in the yellow colour range (indicating some moderately tight supply-demand situations).

3)  But still price largely behaved themselves through the evening

4)  Is that because of a combination of factors, including:

(a)  interconnector limitations also behaved themselves and were not as severe as they have been on other occasions?

(b)  the UIGF of 5,439MW of wind power (and 2,499MW at 17:30 of Large Solar) definitely helped to drop price down the bid stack.

(c)  plus more, no doubt…

Earlier this afternoon we wrote about how ‘NEM-wide ‘Market Demand’ is trending above forecast (to 15:45) – in part because of …’ (and Allan helpfully clarified here).

To follow that snapshot from within ez2view, here’s a subsequent view of two different ‘Forecast Convergence’ widgets, both focused on NEM-wide ‘Market Demand’ to 18:MM – on the left the chart and on the right the grid:

We can see that NEM-wide ‘Market Demand’ continued to climb earlier than forecast … but we see it also declined earlier than forecast as well.  At some point in future we might look at that in more detail (but not now).