Tweet at your own peril A quick mea culpa: after squinting at an ez2view layout early this morning I dashed off a tweet suggesting that six of AGL Energy’s eleven coal-fired generation units were offline – three at Bayswater, two…
Guest author, Allan O’Neil, returns to WattClarity with this review of southern region prices on Monday 31st January 2022 to highlight one example of counterprice flows on the VIC to NSW interconnector.
Guest author, Allan O’Neil, takes an initial look at some of the highlights included in the AEMO’s Electricity Statement of Opportunities for 2021 (a 10-year forecast for what might unfold in the future of the NEM).
For a second portion of Q2 “elephant eating”, I’ll look in some detail at the dynamics of an early instance of spot price volatility in Queensland, because many drivers turn out to be similar across other volatile intervals in the…
An old adage runs that to eat an elephant, it’s best to proceed in small servings. With a very eventful Q2 in the NEM not yet finished, the number of headline events is already large enough – unexpected price volatility…
Whilst there were many things that went wrong on Tuesday 25th May 2021 (last week), guest author Allan O’Neil highlights that there were at least 4 things that went right – contributing to a much less severe outcome than would otherwise have been the case.
Normally this would be part of a much more complete article adding to WattClarity’s growing coverage of the major power system events in Queensland following the incident at Callide C Power Station. However I for one find it easier to…
Over 2,000 MW – or around 55% – of South Australia’s firm supply capacity was unavailable last Friday evening (March 12, 2021), along with virtually all of its large-scale renewable supply (a further 1,800 MW or so) but the lights…
Guest author Allan O’Neil puts together an in-depth explainer about system strength and looks at the current approach to system strength management in South Australia, its impacts and the imminent installation of synchronous condensers on the SA grid.
Through the lens of the GSD2020, Allan O’Neil looks at the much-discussed role of gas-fired generation in the ‘energy transition’ of the NEM’s generation sector
On 25th November, guest author Allan O’Neil examined the ‘X5 Constraint’. Two weeks of operation have passed, so now Allan reviews some of what’s happened.
Given the great interest in the new ‘X5 constraint’, guest author, Allan O’Neil, has invested some time to pick the new constraint equation to understand (and then explain) what it is, how likely it will be to bind, and who is likely to be affected.
Paul McArdle recently drew my attention to a short Twitter thread started by David Osmond on the arcane topic of NEM system frequency behaviour: At Paul’s invitation I’ve dived further into this issue to fill in some background, provide…
Guest author, Allan O’Neil, takes a look at the AEMO’s 2020 ESOO to unpick the reason for the differences in outlook (and the sensationalised news headlines) compared to 2019 ESOO.
Guest author, Allan O’Neil, invests some time to explore a number of different aspects of Easter Saturday (11th April 2020), each noteworthy in their own right (including low demand, high percentage share renewables, negative prices and dynamic bidding)
Guest author, Allan O’Neil tries to piece together further detail of what is intended with the apparent tightening of the Reliability Standard (which has sat at 0.002% USE for many years).
Another islanding event separated the SA region from the rest of the NEM yesterday (Monday, 2nd of March). Allan O’Neil investigates what happened before the event and possible causes.
Guest author, Allan O’Neil, takes a look at what’s happened in the (islanded) market for FCAS services in South Australia over the past two weeks with Heywood out of service. He notes:
“generators in SA as a group would have paid out roughly twice in contingency raise FCAS costs what they earned from selling energy”
Guest author, Allan O’Neil delves further into understanding what happened in response to the transmission tower failures on 31st January 2020 that sent system frequency in South Australia and led to a large reversal of flows.
Guest author, Allan O’Neil does a masterful job with limited time in reviewing some of the goings-on in the NEM (particularly VIC and SA) on Thursday 30th January 2020