Surviving on the island – again
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.
Articles by Allan O'Neil
Don’t Forget About FCAS!
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...
January 31 Followup – How did the lights stay on in South Australia?
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...
A further look at Thursday Jan 30th
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
How Good is Solar Farming?
Guest author, Allan O'Neil, takes a look, via the GSD2019 (released today), at the four different headwinds facing solar farm developers and operators operating in the NEM.
What is the RRO and why has the South Australian Energy Minister just triggered it?
Perhaps missed amongst all the bushfire-related action in the NEM, the SA Minister for Energy last week initiated the Retailer Reliability Obligation. Guest author Allan O’Neil tries to come to grips with what this...
Operating under siege
We take a look at challenges for AEMO in operating the system under the security threats posed by the ongoing bushfires …
Out of the blue, an LOR2
Considering the extraordinary weather, bushfires, and a couple of large Victorian generators still not back from long term repairs, last week was probably less eventful for the NEM than might have been expected, but...
Summer reliability back in the headlines
Guest author, Allan O'Neil, provides us an update today on what we can see about summer 2019-20 (in the physical market, and the financial market), now that it is only just around the corner.
More on those negative prices – how do contracts affect bidding behaviour?
Guest author Allan O'Neil provides this handy explainer on how generators’ contract positions affect their bidding decisions and can make negative spot prices pay off, at least in the short term. Very useful for...
Who’s responsible for those negative prices?
Rapidly growing solar PV output has been widely tagged as the cause of low and even negative prices in Queensland. But in any market it’s the behaviour of ALL participants that determines price outcomes....
ESOO Unboxing
Without resiling from last week’s criticism of how the headlines from AEMO’s 2019 Electricity Statement of Opportunities (ESOO) were communicated, it’d be churlish for me to fault the depth of disclosure and data sitting...
ConfUSEd by the ESOO? You’re not alone.
I’d rather not add to the number of conspiracy theories in circulation, but I wonder if there’s a conspiracy to make understanding our electricity system in general, and its reliability in particular, as difficult...
Keeping the lights on this summer – possible impact of the Loy Yang A2 and Mortlake outages
Two large thermal generating units in Victoria with combined capacity of over 800 MW have recently experienced major electrical faults each requiring many months to repair. Previous WattClarity posts have covered initial assessments of...
Extended outage of Loy Yang A unit 2 – reliability and forward price impacts
A broader look at what the extended outage at Loy Yang A unit 2 seems to be having on the spot and financial markets into the future, via AEMO MT PASA data, and via...
Price Setting Concepts – an Explainer
Guest author, Allan O'Neil, contributes to our series of articles explaining how prices are set the the NEM (as part of how dispatch works). In this article, Allan explains some of the details in...
A (Much) Deeper Dive into Friday March 1 2019
Guest author, Allan O'Neil, drills into considerable depth to understand, and clearly explain, some of what happened during a volatile period in the VIC and SA regions on Friday 1st March 2019
NEM spot prices remained stubbornly high in 2018 – what were the drivers?
The surge in NEM spot prices since 2015, and related impacts on contract and retail prices, have been extensively discussed and analysed in many forums, from ACCC inquiries to Twitter. The underlying reasons for...
NEM Summer Outlook 2018/19 – what is AEMO saying?
Following on from Paul’s article on Queensland, this post examines the summer outlook for the other mainland NEM regions, drawing from some key AEMO publications and datasources, namely: the Electricity Statement of Opportunities (ESOO) published...
High SA Prices on Monday 9 July–Business as Usual?
One of our guest authors, Allan O'Neil, takes a closer look at what happened in the South Australian region of the NEM on Monday 9th July 2018