Watt’s Within a Dispatch Interval? A *very* simplistic view, for a start…

Yesterday we wrote about ‘Three of the common building blocks within the National Electricity Market’, with the Dispatch Interval being one of the most commonly used and (to various extents) understood.

In this article (essentially the second in a series) we’ll introduce a very simplistic view, but use this as a starting point in subsequent articles that progressively peel more layers of the onion to reveal and discuss some of the quirks and challenges of the dispatch interval in the real world:

As noted in this ‘Part 1’ article:

1)  the 5-minute timestep has been used for over 26 years since the start of the NEM back on 13th December 1998, and even beforehand.

2)  this building block:

(a)  Comprises 75 sequential 4-second timesteps;

(b)  And itself is repeated ~26,280 times each quarter, and  ~105,000 times each year’

3)  But it’s also important to note (as shown above) that the Dispatch Interval in the NEM uses an ‘end of interval’ naming convention, which is cascaded up to 30-minute timesteps as well (for instance).

In very simplistic terms, each dispatch interval ‘contains’ two discrete and sequential processes that together to create a dispatch interval as follows…

Dispatch for 10:05 (say)

Step 1 = A very simplistic view is that there’s an infinitesimally small period at the start of each dispatch interval in which ‘Magic Happens’, by which I mean:

1a)  The status of the network, and market, is ascertained

1b)  NEMDE does ‘it’s thing’ to calculate Spot Prices and Targets and other things

1c)  These are then communicated to market participants and other stakeholders

Step 2 = in this same simplistic view, the whole of the next 5 minutes comprise units (DUIDs) happily following Targets to the end of the dispatch interval.

‘Rinse and Repeat’ for the Dispatch for 10:10 (say)

Etc…

But reality is far more complex than this, as we start to discuss in ‘(A first step into the complexities of) the Dispatch Interval in the Real World’ (link coming soon).