Spare capacity in South Australia drops below 100MW on Wednesday evening 12th February 2025

We’ve already noted ‘‘Market Demand’ soars in South Australia on Wednesday evening 12th February 2025’.

But it’s worth separately posting with this NEMwatch snapshot at the 19:00 dispatch interval (NEM time) to highlight a few things:

No numbering on the image, but with highlights:

1)  It’s a very tight supply-demand situation in the SA region (or, more specifically, ‘Economic Island’):

(a)  We’ve highlighted an IRPM down at only 4%

(b)  We calculate only 96MW of ‘spare’ Available Generation at this point

i.  being the difference between Available Generation in the region (2,771MW) and net ‘Market Demand’ (2,675MW)

ii.  which would not include ‘out of market’ reserves the AEMO might call on, like Reserve Trader.

(c)  The AEMO has declared ‘Actual LOR1’.

2)  ‘Market Demand’ is high in various regions:

(a)  We see at this dispatch interval it’s 3,321MW in South Australia

… though we also see it did reach as high as 3,327MW slightly earlier.

(b)  And also above 32,000MW across the NEM

… refer back to this >17-year statistical analysis to see how high that is in context

(c)  But also VIC and QLD are firmly out of their ‘green zones’ as well.

3)  Whilst wind yield in South Australia is slowly increasing (since the middle of the day, it is still very low

(a)  Which is one of the big drivers for the very tight supply-demand balance.

(b)  So a useful reminder:

i.  of all that analysis we did of the importance of the ‘Aggregate Scheduled Target’ metric as a measure of the requirement for Firming Capacity;

ii.  and earlier analysis to show that (at least at that time) we’re not building enough of it.

Well, I thought that was enough for the article…

AEMO declares ‘Actual LOR2’

… but at 19:15 we receive an SMS alert from ez2view to let us know that the AEMO has declared ‘Actual LOR2’. in South Australia as follows:

‘——————————————————————-
MARKET NOTICE
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From : AEMO
To : NEMITWEB1
Creation Date : 12/02/2025 19:15:02

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Notice ID : 124573
Notice Type ID : RESERVE NOTICE
Notice Type Description : LRC/LOR1/LOR2/LOR3
Issue Date : 12/02/2025
External Reference : Actual Lack Of Reserve Level 2 (LOR2) in the SA region – 12/02/2025

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Reason :

AEMO ELECTRICITY MARKET NOTICE

Actual Lack Of Reserve Level 2 (LOR2) in the SA region – 12/02/2025

An Actual LOR2 condition has been declared under clause 4.8.4(b) of the National Electricity Rules for the SA region from 1900 hrs.
The Actual LOR2 condition is forecast to exist until 1930 hrs

The capacity reserve required is 245 MW
The minimum reserve available is 107 MW

AEMO is seeking an immediate market response.

An insufficient market response may require AEMO to implement a AEMO intervention event.

Manager NEM Real Time Operations

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END OF REPORT
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