Yesterday, after noticing in the ‘Generator Outages’ widget in ez2view, we posted ‘All 6 coal units at Gladstone coincidentally out on unplanned outage this coming week?’.
1) Already overnight both Darryl (here) and Fred (here) have left comments to identify industrial action as the cause of the coincident, and short-notice, outages.
2) I should have thought of that, as a possibility, as:
(a) it’s not often an entire station is offline (or threatened to be offline)
(b) one case that comes to mind was relating to Loy Yang A some years back (this note in December 2016 and this note in May 2017).
So I have taken a quick further look this morning
Information about the industrial action at Gladstone?
A quick search this morning finds the update ‘Industrial Action set to begin at Gladstone Power Station’ on the MEU website, which I have also copied in here for ease of readers:
‘On Tuesday, 28th January 2025 the Mining and Energy Union as part of a Single Bargaining Unit (SBU) with 4 other unions, sat down with NRG management in the hopes of finalising months’ negotiations and secure an industry-standard agreement for the workers at Gladstone Power Station. Despite the MEU’s best efforts, NRG management has failed to address key claims raised by the SBU to align with industry norms across Queensland.
Key outstanding issues raised include:
Salaries and Cost of Living Adjustments (COLA): Workers have demanded an uplift in payments to reflect the high Consumer Price Index (CPI) levels experienced during the life of the last agreement. Power Stations across Queensland have acknowledged the financial pressure on workers by providing COLA payments – Yet NRG management remains silent on that issue.
Updates to working arrangements aligned to industry standard: Workers seek changes to their current working arrangements involving rosters and hours of work to align with industry standards, that have been achieved at numerous power stations in Queensland over the past 18 months. Gladstone Power Station remains to be the last site in this round of negotiations to adopt these improvements, which ensures better work-life balance for the employees.
The situation will further compound the ongoing challenges in Queensland’s energy supply network and various maintenance issues, this industrial action at NRG will place further strain on the Queensland energy sector. Today’s negotiations will determine the next steps. However, with no satisfactory progress made, the MEU and its members will commence industrial actions starting at midnight tonight. These actions will include work bans and a 24-hour work stoppage scheduled for Tuesday, 4 February 2025.’
What’s particularly interesting for me are the dates:
1) We see:
(a) The meeting last Tuesday 28th January 2025; and
(b) The 24-hour stoppage from tomorrow (Tuesday 4th February 2025)
2) But I’m not clear from the above (e.g. there’s no publish date on the MEU article) when the decision was made to call a stoppage.
Information elsewhere?
There’s two main stakeholders of interest to me in terms of ownership and/or operations of the Gladstone Power Station:
1) NRG is part-owner and operates the power station and has a basic website here. Ordinarily it does not need much, but the downside is no news update about the action.
2) The GOC party that’s operated Gladstone in the NEM has changed a few times over >25 years
(a) How many people remember Enertrade?
(b) Currently it’s CS Energy, so I did look on the ‘Latest News’ page, but there’s nothing there (yet?)
Other industrial action in Gladstone?
As an aside, I note that searching for “industrial action” in Gladstone over the past month also reveals recent industrial action mooted by tug fleet workers in Gladstone:
1) such as noted by Angela Macdonald-Smith on 10th January, and also others).
2) and also noted by others (such as here on 9th January, here on 17th January.
I can’t see that these are related, other than in terms of broad themes such as cost of living pressures and the industrial relations climate.
When did the data change at AEMO?
Taking a closer look at the MT PASA DUID Availability data in that focused widget in ez2view this morning, I’ve included a snapshot here to highlight that it was on Saturday 1st February 2025 that CS Energy made the change to alert AEMO that all 6 units might be offline for a few days this week:
Toggling through the updates made on Saturday 1st February (not shown here) we find that it was in between 09:00 and 12:00 on Saturday 1st February that the AEMO was alerted.
What of the supply-demand balance (possible concerns in QLD … and also VIC/SA) this week?
With reference to the ‘Forecast Convergence’ widget in ez2view this morning I’ve included 3 identical copies of the widget focused on the LOR condition forecast in ST PASA and PD PASA out the coming week, just focused on three separate regions:
Reading from the top downwards, we see:
1) In QLD, even with the (newly updated) plan for all 6 units at Gladstone to be unavailable, the AEMO does not even see forecast LOR1 condition.
… i.e. no tightness in the supply-demand balance
2) In VIC, we see that overnight the AEMO has re-introduced a forecast LOR1 condition for this evening Monday 3rd February 2025;
(a) for just one forecast run, for one half-hour period, there was a forecast LOR2.
(b) so …
i. whilst it could be a big day in terms of ‘Market Demand’;
ii. and, because it’s hot, most components of the electricity system/grid will experience high temperature stress;
iii. and we might see some price action as a result,
iv. it seems quite unlikely there will be ‘blackouts’.
3) In SA, we see that overnight (same time as for VIC above) the AEMO has reintroduced a forecast LOR2.
Related to this, at 04:48 the AEMO published MN 124033 as follows:
‘——————————————————————-
MARKET NOTICE
——————————————————————-
From : AEMO
To : NEMITWEB1
Creation Date : 03/02/2025 04:48:24
——————————————————————-
Notice ID : 124033
Notice Type ID : RESERVE NOTICE
Notice Type Description : LRC/LOR1/LOR2/LOR3
Issue Date : 03/02/2025
External Reference : PDPASA – Forecast Lack Of Reserve Level 2 (LOR2) in the SA Region on 03/02/2025
——————————————————————-
Reason :
AEMO ELECTRICITY MARKET NOTICE
AEMO declares a Forecast LOR2 condition under clause 4.8.4(b) of the National Electricity Rules for the SA region for the following Period:
[1.] From 1830 hrs 03/02/2025 to 1930 hrs 03/02/2025.
The forecast capacity reserve requirement is 371 MW.
The minimum capacity reserve available is 251 MW.
AEMO is seeking a market response.
AEMO has not yet estimated the latest time at which it would need to intervene through an AEMO intervention event.
Manager NEM Real Time Operations
——————————————————————-
END OF REPORT
——————————————————————-’
That’s all for now…
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