We noted on Wednesday 5th March about the ‘Unplanned outage of No 1 leg of Directlink (was this related to the emergence of TC Alfred?)’.
Well, a similar thing has happened again on Friday 7th March 2025 – as noted in MN125355:
‘——————————————————————-
MARKET NOTICE
——————————————————————-
From : AEMO
To : NEMITWEB1
Creation Date : 07/03/2025 06:40:37
——————————————————————-
Notice ID : 125355
Notice Type ID : POWER SYSTEM EVENTS
Notice Type Description : Emergency events/conditions
Issue Date : 07/03/2025
External Reference : Non-credible contingency event – NSW region – 07/03/2025
——————————————————————-
Reason :
AEMO ELECTRICITY MARKET NOTICE.
Non-credible contingency event – NSW region – 07/03/2025
At 0612 hrs the following plant tripped.
Lismore132 – Mullumbimby 9U6 132kV Line
Lismore132 – Mullumbimby 9U7 132kV Line
Ewingsdale – Mullumbimby 9G5 132kV Line
No 1 and 2 cables of Directlink
AEMO did not instruct load shedding.
Approximately 7MW of bulk electrical load has been disconnected.
The cause of this non credible contingency event is not known at this stage.
Manager NEM Real Time Operations
——————————————————————-
END OF REPORT
——————————————————————-’
Again we wonder about the extent to which TC Alfred is involved in this?
… however noting that, for those without power, they probably don’t care much as to the cause.
On this occasion I though it was worth looking (down at the sub-transmission and distribution level) at the busy display for northern NSW seen in the Essential Energy outage map (as at ~08:48 NEM time this morning):
Zooming into the top-right corner, we see this:
I can’t immediately think of much medium or large-size local generation in the area, so wonder if the loss of interconnection from the north and the south is a significant contributing factor? On the Essential Energy news page here, they have an update from 06:00 (which I think would be AEDST, so 05:00 NEM time, so before the network outages (occurring at 07:10 AEDST) noted in the Market Notice above):
‘Cyclone Alfred has left over 35,000 homes and businesses without power in Northern NSW overnight after severe winds and heavy rain covered the region.
The worst hit communities are in the Northern Rivers and Far North Coast.
Essential Energy crews worked late into the evening to restore what they could safely until conditions became too dangerous to work in.
Once safe to do so, crews will continue to restore power where they can until they are able to access areas of the network that are flooded or damaged by wind or vegetation debris.
Due to the extreme conditions, the extent of the damage and the continuing weather event it may take several days before power is restored to customers.
For up-to-date information on impacted locations and estimated restoration times (when known), visit our website outages page.
If you see fallen powerlines or powerlines in water, please stay away and call Essential Energy on 13 20 80 to report the damage. In an emergency always call 000.’
PS1 Lismore SVC outage also in the morning
Whilst we await the arrival of TC Alfred where we are in Brisbane, a quick look back at Market Notices in the day reveal two others…
At 06:44 the AEMO published MN125356 as follows:
‘——————————————————————-
MARKET NOTICE
——————————————————————-
From : AEMO
To : NEMITWEB1
Creation Date : 07/03/2025 06:44:20
——————————————————————-
Notice ID : 125356
Notice Type ID : INTER-REGIONAL TRANSFER
Notice Type Description : Inter-Regional Transfer limit variation
Issue Date : 07/03/2025
External Reference : Inter-Regional Transfer limit variation – Directlink – NSW Region
——————————————————————-
Reason :
AEMO ELECTRICITY MARKET NOTICE
Refer to Market Notice 125355.
Inter-Regional Transfer limit variation – Directlink – NSW Region
There has been an unplanned outage of the No 1 and 2 cables of Directlink .
The following constraint set was invoked at 0620 hrs 07/03/2025
N-X_MBTE_3
The constraint set contains the following interconnector on the left hand side.
N-Q-MNSP1
Refer AEMO Network Outage Scheduler (NOS) for further details.
Manager NEM Real Time Operations
——————————————————————-
END OF REPORT
——————————————————————-‘
… and at 07:27 the AEMO published MN125357 as follows:
‘——————————————————————-
MARKET NOTICE
——————————————————————-
From : AEMO
To : NEMITWEB1
Creation Date : 07/03/2025 07:27:37
——————————————————————-
Notice ID : 125357
Notice Type ID : INTER-REGIONAL TRANSFER
Notice Type Description : Inter-Regional Transfer limit variation
Issue Date : 07/03/2025
External Reference : Inter-regional transfer limit variation – Lismore SVC – NSW region – 07/03/2025
——————————————————————-
Reason :
AEMO ELECTRICITY MARKET NOTICE
Inter-regional transfer limit variation – Lismore SVC – NSW region – 07/03/2025
At 0720 hrs 07/03/2025 there was an unplanned outage of Lismore SVC.
The following constraint set(s) invoked at 0725 hrs 07/03/2025
N-LS_VC1
This constraint set(s) contains equations with the following interconnectors on the LHS.
N-Q-MNSP1,NSW1-QLD1
Refer to the AEMO Network Outage Scheduler for further information.
Manager NEM Real Time Operations
——————————————————————-
END OF REPORT
——————————————————————-‘
This all seems to be related.
PS2 approx 70,000 customers off supply in the morning
Also worth noting the customers off supply noted by Anthony Cornelius in his ‘Friday morning update from WeatherWatch, and TC Alfred’.
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