It’s been a busy period this past month or more (including with some time away from the market), and I’m still trying to catch up.

This article’s a short one triggered by Angela Macdonald-Smith’s article in the AFR on Wednesday afternoon titled ‘Waratah Super Battery faces longer delay in test for NSW grid’:

I was out and about on Wednesday waiting for a meeting to start when I saw the article, so browsed a bit and also found:

• The update from Akaysha Energy ‘Waratah Super Battery Transformer Update’ that presumably triggered Angela’s article; and
• I also saw that Sophie Vorrath had written ‘New transformer in works for Australia’s most powerful battery, but return to full service pushed out again’ on the same day

It may well be others have also written about this since … I’ve not had time to check.

Curiosity (and a spare moment) today prompted me to open up the ‘Forecast Convergence’ widget in ez2view:

In this respect:

1)   We see here that the most recent data updates (i.e. top rows) are identical to the rows from earlier days

(a)  Remember that the ‘Grid’ view in this widget allows one to ‘look up a vertical’ in order to see ‘that other dimension of time’

(b)  With the identical rows (as noted on the image) is presumably because of AER Guidelines for how SIPS is to be represented in this data set submissions?

2)  As it stands:

(a)  The drop from 350MW ‘market available’ on 31st October 2026 to 150MW ‘market available’ on 1st November 2026 is presumably related to the ongoing expectation that the battery will be fully available at 850MW (for market and SIPS) but with a full 700MW (i.e. an additional 350MW) transitioning to SIPS at that date … i.e. start of ‘summer’

(b)  Prior to that time, the 350MW ‘market available’ is consistent (excepting a pre-planned full outage for about a week WHEN), so sometime in that period we presume:

i.  The replacement of the (HVT3) failed transformer will arrive on site (the Akaysha note says ‘scheduled for the third quarter of 2026’), be installed and commissioned; and also

ii.  The other (HVT2) transformer that was taken offline for testing at the same time (in situ) and ‘its remediation incorporated into a defined program of work to ensure all three transformers will be operational at the site later in 2026’.

… but neither of which are precisely visible in the current MT PASA Duid Availability data, presumably because of:

i.  the AER Guidelines for how SIPS is to be represented in this data set; and also

ii.  uncertainties relating to the timings of both of these (pre-commercial operations) processes?

For those who are curious (like me) here is a 270-day view of bidding and dispatch at WTAHB1 in ‘Bids & offers’ within ez2view:

Operations have been pretty consistent (for the 1 x transformer operational) since the incident in October 2025.

Apologies that this might be a bit cryptic for some of our readers, but it’s all I have time for at present.