From tomorrow (Fri 20th Nov) market participants in south-western NSW and north-western VIC will need to grapple with yet another transmission constraint seeking to ‘constraint down’ their output when it’s sunny and/or windy. This one is named ‘N^^N_NIL_3’.
Today (Thu 19th Nov 2020) the AEMC published a draft ruling following the AER request for a rule change relating to Semi-Scheduled generators … which itself followed from two COAG Energy Council requests to them
Some brief notes about the impact that South Australia’s ‘Stay at Home’ order might have on demand in the region.
Third day in a row, and at exactly the same time as yesterday (Mon 17th Nov) the dispatch price in QLD spiked through the roof. Here’s a quick first look…
It’s not officially summer, yet – but it sure seems like it is across QLD and NSW. High temperatures drive some prices spiking up to the Market Price Cap in both ENERGY and some FCAS commodities as well…
In part 5 of this expanding Case Study of the unexpected price spike on Tuesday 13th Oct, linked to a large & sudden drop in output across 10 solar farms, we take a detailed look at the constraint set ‘Q-BCNE_821’ invoked to deal with the transmission outage between H11 Nebo (in ‘North’ zone) and H10 Bouldercombe (in ‘Central-West’ zone)
The prior record for ‘minimum demand’ in Victoria seems to have only lasted 8 short weeks, with the level nudged still lower on a sunny Sunday 1st November 2020 (coincident with a bit more freedom for Victorians after lockdown).
A brief note to inform readers that the AEMC is fast-tracking consideration of the AER’s Proposed Rule Change on Semi-Scheduled assets … but also to reinforce our view that the challenge is MUCH broader than is being addressed here.
Winding down through Beer O’clock at the end of a long week with the team and the buzzing of my phone distracts to a few successive price spikes this afternoon in the NSW Region: Here’s a snapshot of the 16:00…
On Thursday 22nd October, the AEMO also released a short document titled ‘Operational management of low demand in South Australia’.
In part 4 of this expanding Case Study of the unexpected price spike on Tuesday 13th Oct, linked to a large & sudden drop in output across 10 solar farms, we take a quick look at what happened at most of the QLD generators through this 10:00 trading period.
Patricia Boyce’ challenging question coincided with the low point of cyclic wind output across the NEM this afternoon, and prompted some thinking…
In part 3 of this expanding Case Study of the unexpected price spike on Tuesday 13th Oct, linked to a large & sudden drop in output across 10 solar farms, we dig deeper to explore… including wondering whether it would have been expected in advance.
Based on some preliminary analysis of the Powerlink’s ‘Qdata’ set (available in ez2view) we present our current hypothesis as to the sequence of the events yesterday in the QLD region, where 600MW of solar generation was lost, causing the price to spike to MPC.
Alerted to a price spike at 09:45 this morning in the QLD region, we discovered some reduction in load (spot-exposed Demand Response probably) and also a large collective trip in Solar Farm output (reasons unclear).
A couple glimmers of hope spotted recently, that there might be some (belated) awareness that the current methods of support for ‘anytime/anywhere energy’ are not scalable, or sustainable.
Records continue to tumble in the off-season, with the rise of rooftop PV. Both South Australia and Whole-of-NEM hit new low points Sun 11th October 2020.
Only 52 days after I initially envisaged being able to have this article published, a couple things today have prompted me to post this drain-dump of concerns that have been jangling around in my head – related to possible risks that COVID might pose in the NEM.
This 20th Case Study (the other side of the weekend to the 19th Case Study) in the series investigates one dispatch interval showing extreme Aggregate Under-Performance across all Semi-Scheduled units on Monday 8th April 2019.
Following the consultation process conducted by the AER (stemming from their Issues Paper 3 months ago) the AER has today submitted a rule change request to the AEMC relating to Semi-Scheduled generation.