We’ve been invited by the Australian Institute of Energy (AIE) to speak this evening in Sydney about some of the lessons learnt in the process of completing our Generator Report Card. Here’s some context for those who are going to attend (in terms of answers to the 5 frequency asked questions) – and it might help others who are unable to attend, as well.
Some brief data gathering and analysis, primarily because I could not resist the exploration, of what might have happened with the load shedding in the electricity grid across England, Wales and Scotland on Friday last week.
Last week’s notable under-frequency load shedding in Great Britain following what appears to be the loss of two generation units in quick succession prompts me to publish some of the analysis of aggregate levels of inertia supplied by synchronous generators in South Australia as part of the Generator Report Card.
A full page article in the FinReview today quotes a number of people (including our work in the Generator Report Card) speaking about heightened risk in the NEM. Coincident with this, we see another instance of negative prices in South Australia (which has become increasingly common) but also something I can’t remember seeing before – an average negative price across the entire day so far!
Bit of an uncanny coincidence, having posted some concerns about the coming summer 2019-20 only 2 days ago, to find that the AEMO has called for expressions of interest for the Reliability and Emergency Reserve Trader (RERT) Panel across all…
Given the high level of interest in the Generator Report Card, both the Australian Institute of Energy and the Australian Energy Council have organised separate events (in Sydney in August) providing the opportunity to talk through some of the things we’ve learnt through the process of putting the Generator Report Card together. You’re most welcome to attend!
Coincidentally this week it seems to me that we’re facing storm warnings on two different fronts – one literal (and much easier to prepare for), whilst the other one is metaphorical and operates at several different levels (and is much, much more difficult to manage).
Some thoughts about some important questions we should be asking, to follow on from AGL’s announcement last Friday in relation to Torrens A (linked to Barkers Inlet and Loy Yang A2) and also about Liddell.
In terms of diversity of intermittent supplies, we need to understand that we’re not just comparing data series on a scale that runs from “highly correlated” to “random”…
A few thoughts about the dispatch price being at, or below, $0/MWh for a dispatch interval on Sunday afternoon – implications for the future…
A quick look after the unit trip (including reported explosion) at Mortlake Unit 2
Returning to the challenge posed to readers in April 2019, to guess (or analytically determine!) which of the hundreds of units operating in the NEM showed such a severe limitation in output at high temperatures. It’s not what most people thought it was – far from it!
Some excerpts from the Generator Report Card to sample some of the analysis we performed to assess various aspects of the ‘dependability’ of coal-fired power stations in the NEM. In this post we highlight availability (or, more precisely, the level of unavailability) as an aggregated monthly volumetric measure trended over 17 years.
Following the notice from AGL Energy on Friday last week about the extended outage occurring at Loy Yang A unit 2, here’s some initial thoughts via WattClarity (with more to come as time permits)
Here’s some initial details of upcoming informal Q&A sessions in Melbourne (on Tuesday next week!), followed by Adelaide, Brisbane and Sydney – where we’d look forward to meeting with those interested in the Generator Report Card.
The framework we used to analyse the extent to which coal-fired power is “dependable” in the Generator Report Card, and the extent to which it’s been changing.
A summary of some comments that we’ve seen in the first few days of the Generator Report Card
For those who have already pre-ordered their copy, this is how you can access – and for those who have not, but would like a copy, this is how to arrange this as well.
Worth sharing the level of detail we’re going to, in Part 3 of the Generator Report Card (5 parts in total), where we have assembled millions of data points into a single page summarizing the last 10 years of performance of a particular generation unit. There’s a page for each operational unit (327 in total).
We’re taking a much, much deeper dive into generator performance at high temperatures (for all DUIDs operational across the NEM) to see how each one of them, individually, is affected by high temperatures. Guess which one this “mystery DUID” is and we’d look forward to providing some form of prize…