It was an alert to the ez2view mobile application that first triggered this article, but I’ll start with this snapshot from NEMwatch at 14:45 on Wednesday 19th August 2026 for reasons that will become clear below:
You’ll see I annotated this image with both:
1) A significant jump in ‘Market Demand’ in NSW of +565MW (i.e. up 9% in a 5-minute Dispatch Interval) to the 14:45 dispatch interval NEM time;
2) But, in adding that, we also see a ~+500MW jump in ‘Market Demand’ across the NEM to the 11:10 dispatch interval NEM time:
… which my spidey senses suggest might be due to ‘three hours free power’?!
However in the couple minutes it took to put the above together, a subsequent alert came in to speak about an almost-as-large –422 MW drop in ‘Market Demand’ in NSW in the next dispatch interval:
Finally, worth including this snapshot of 2 hours of mainland frequency from our internal readings … clearly showing the frequency trace spilling outside of the PFR deadband (though still inside the NOFB), which probably suggests unanticipated fluctuations in supply-demand balance over the past couple hours – including the cycling in NSW above?
It’s an ‘interesting’ new world we’re full steam ahead for, in the energy transition.
I do not know how it compares the larger scale, but can say an observation from my Essential Energy Amber Electric controlled battery, this may be relevant to the 2:30-3pm.
1. I had a moderate amount of cloud all day, so house battery didn’t charge completely.
2. Essential Energy has the evening peak price start at 3pm (~+12c/kW).
3. Amber was scheduling some rapid battery charging leading up to 3pm, as it was the lowest predicted price of the day.
If this was happening at scale, it would be an example of hidden load. I know there was mention a few months ago of a 500MW hidden generation that could be attributed to home batteries, and here we have another similar amount in the other direction. Plausible?