Victoria’s 17-year demand record in sight tonight, with demand tracking above AEMO forecasts as Melbourne soars past 40°C

As we noted this morning, the Victorian region could potentially see a new high point for market demand this evening (which would break a record that has stood for seventeen years), as extreme heat conditions across the state are continuing to test the AEMO’s demand forecasts. The current market demand record stands at 10,496 MW and was set on the 29th of January 2009.

Similarly, as reported by the ABC, Victoria’s all-time temperature record is also currently very close to being broken, with the town of Walpeup in the state’s north-west currently at a searing 48.7°C at the time of writing — just 0.1°C short of breaking the highest recorded temperature in the state. In Melbourne, temperatures have climbed to around 41°C.

This morning we alluded to the possibility that market demand could track above forecasts (like we saw somewhat in SA last night). In the Forecast Convergence screenshot shown below, actual market demand has been tracking more than 200 MW above some of the earlier P30 forecasts through much of today, highlighting the elevated uncertainty that is emerging under these extreme heat conditions.

Source: ez2view’s Forecast Convergence widget

Note: The actual demand values in this chart represent the final demand value as at the final dispatch interval of each half hour, where as P30 forecasts are intended to represent average demand over each half hour period.

Despite this upward pressure on demand, the AEMO is not currently projecting any Lack of Reserve (LOR) conditions for the region this evening. The supply side within the region currently appears relatively well placed to respond to the surge in demand, with the screenshot from our Generator Outages widget below indicating that the 395 MW Yallourn Unit 2 remains the only major unit outage in VIC at present.

Source: ez2view’s Generator Outages widget

As always under extreme conditions, we’ll continue to keep a close eye on how demand, availability, and forecasts evolve through the remainder of the evening.