A closer look at LOR projections in South Australia next Monday 30th June 2025

As Paul noted this morning, the AEMO overnight issued a forecast LOR3 notice for two periods next Monday, June 30th.

Since that article was published at around 8:30am this morning, the AEMO have since downgraded their forecast from LOR3 to LOR2, as seen in the screenshot below. We can also see in the screenshot that the LOR2 forecasts now extend out into Tuesday July 1st and Wednesday July 2nd.

The range of forecast LOR conditions for SA next Monday and Tuesday.

Columns represent point in time, rows represent the recency of the forecast. STPASA forecasts are made each hour.

Source: ez2view’s Forecast Convergence widget

As a quick refresher, the AEMO use a three-tier Lack of Reserve (LOR) warning system to flag forecast (and actual) instances of inadequate reserves in a region.

An LOR3 is the most severe of these three tiers; however, we must always remember that the forecasting system is intended to elicit a market response, so for this reason, it should not necessarily be viewed as an accurate ‘prediction’ of the future.

To provide some context on the underlying factors at play, I’ll start by sharing the screenshot below, which shows the forecast convergence (in chart form) for market demand in SA over the past week, and for the week ahead.

We can see that the forecasted peak for next Monday is moderately high in relation to this period, but it is not the highest level projected or experienced over this period.

Range of forecasts for market demand over the past seven days (left of the central vertical dotted line) and next seven days (right of the vertical dotted line).

Source: ez2view’s Forecast Convergence widget

Now, to take a look at the supply side, below we see the forecast convergence for regional UIGFs. These help us depict wind and solar availability conditions for semi-scheduled VRE generators.

One notable trend we see in these charts is that the current forecasts show that wind availability is predicted to drop-off significantly (from recent record highs) starting from Thursday.

The range for UIGF forecasts made for SA semi-scheduled wind (top) and solar (bottom) over the past week, and the week ahead.

Source: ez2view’s Forecast Convergence widget

As for the scheduled fleet, the screenshot below shows generator outages using MTPASA data. We can see an ongoing long-term planned outage for the 210 MW Torrens Island A Unit 4, which will continue over this period — but at this stage, there are few other notable major outages in the region. It’s worth noting that the 150MW Hornsdale Power Reserve is currently experiencing a planned derating (down to 80 MW), whilst several recently energised batteries are also not yet operating at full capacity due to commissioning.

A view of outages amongst the scheduled fleet in SA over the next four weeks, with Monday June 30th highlighted.

Source: ez2view’s Generator Outages widget