As foreshadowed earlier today in our prior updates — first noting that Victoria was expected to come within striking distance of its long-standing demand record, and then observing that market demand was already tracking above AEMO forecasts as Melbourne surged past 40°C — the Victorian region has now gone on to set a new all-time maximum demand record this evening. The previous benchmark of 10,496 MW, which had stood for 17 years, was ultimately surpassed as extreme heat across the state drove intense cooling load through the late-afternoon and evening peak.
The record was broken at the 17:40 dispatch interval this evening with market demand landing at 10,567 MW. As we can see in the screenshot below, the record was accompanied by a price spike with the spot price for the region hitting $1,703/MWh.
Source: ez2view’s NEM Map Widget at 17:40 NEM time (18:40 local time for Victoria)
Demand has continued to rise and ended up peaking at 10,784 MW for the 18:00 dispatch interval (7pm local time in Melbourne).
The record demand outcome coincided with extraordinary meteorological conditions. According to reporting from the ABC, it was the hottest day on record for the state by some measures, with maximum temperature records broken across multiple locations as a severe heatwave gripped the state. These extreme conditions not only pushed electricity demand to unprecedented levels, but also contributed to elevated bushfire risk across large parts of Victoria.
The Age are reporting that around 15,000 properties are currently without power, possibly due to bushfire impacts on parts of the state’s distribution network, during the late afternoon. The outage maps from the CitiPower/Powercor and AusNet websites are displayed below to show the extent of these outages.
Source: CitiPower / Powercor
Source: AusNet
Update: As at 6:30pm NEM time (or 7:30pm Melbourne time) the ABC are reporting that the number of properties in Victoria experiencing distribution-level outages has grown to 63,000+
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