Different approaches for dispatch
Highlighting the different approaches taken to cost/price based dispatch in an interconnected electricity system (or market).
Articles by Paul McArdle
Paul was one of the founders of Global-Roam in February 2000. He is currently the CEO of the company and the principal author of WattClarity. Writing for WattClarity has become a natural extension of his work in understanding the electricity market, enabling him to lead the team in developing better software for clients.
Before co-founding the company, Paul worked as a Mechanical Engineer for the Queensland Electricity Commission in the early 1990s. He also gained international experience in Japan, the United States, Canada, the UK, and Argentina as part of his ES Cornwall Memorial Scholarship.
Beginner’s Guide to how dispatch works in the NEM, and hence how prices are set
Walking through 5 (much simplified) "Dispatch Intervals" to illustrate some starting principles of marginal price based dispatch arrangements, such as used in the National Electricity Market
Helping to tame Villain #4 by understanding more about MLFs
Conversations in the week following my post about "Villain #4" (being the deficit in required Energy Literacy) prompted some analysis relating to Marginal Loss Factors
Villain #4 – the yawning gap between our Sector-Wide Aggregate “Energy Literacy” and what we require
A year after I first spoke about "Villains" playing a role in the train wreck of our energy transition, I've finally found some time to post about Villain #4.
AEMO released 2018 Integrated System Plan (ISP)
A back-dated article about the AEMO's 2018 ISP
Monday 9th July sees yo-yo prices in South Australia
Some brief analysis of today's price volatility seen in the South Australian region of the NEM
Reviewing the pattern of spot prices for Q2 2018 suggests that we’re far from out of the woods, yet
Returning to the theme of analysis of Q2 prices (completed in 2017 and 2016 due to Q2 historically being an uneventful period) we see that prices have backed off from the "off the charts"...
Further thoughts on the emergence of the “Solar Correlation Penalty”
Some further thoughts on what we've termed a "Solar Correlation Penalty" which point-view of some specific dispatch intervals seems to suggest is occurring
Analytical Challenge – In a complex system like the NEM, it’s almost always numerous factors/changes that combine to produce an outcome
All too often people (including us sometimes, unfortunately) are quick to attribute some particular outcome to a single contributing factor. Almost always this is an over-simplification.
Analytical Challenge – remembering that it’s impossible to know motive (but does not stop us guessing)
Highlighting the temptation to ascribe motivation to others - despite the fact that we understand that we can never know for sure.
Recapping a shaky week for the supply-demand balance in the NSW region last week (Mon 4th June to Fri 8th June 2018)
The start of some analysis that helps to identify the variety of factors that combined to give a shaky balance between supply and demand in NSW last week.
Electricity demand stopped declining after 2014 (on a NEM-wide, Annual Average basis)
A comment made by TransGrid at the Energy Networks 2018 conference today jolted me to update my (somewhat) outdated paradigm of declining demand.
Winter 2018 in the NEM
A collection of articles about events that occurred through winter 2018 in the NEM (i.e. from 1st June to 31st August 2018)
AEMO issues LOR2 warning for South Australia for next Thursday, 31st May
Yesterday (Thu 24th May) AEMO issued a Low Reserve Condition notice (at LOR2 level) for South Australia next Thursday 31st May. We take a quick look....
An updated look at daily curtailment of aggregate wind farm output across South Australia
This morning over on Twitter, I was pulled into a discussion that had started with respect to volume of wind energy curtailed in South Australia: The genesis of this twitter conversation was the...
Helping our clients make sense of (and grasp the opportunities in) the AEMO’s new MT PASA data sets
A brief first look at AEMO's new MT PASA data sets - as we push forward in the next upgrade of our ez2view software to help our clients understand the data, and the opportunities...
The “Solar Correlation Penalty” has already arrived in the NEM
Already we are seeing the highly correlated output of solar PV deliver interesting challenges for the NEM - both to the project proponents themselves, and also to the "everything else" that supplies what's left...
A timely reminder of the need for *much* more diversity in wind harvest patterns
Alerted by our NEMwatch dashboard, I delve into the data and see a scary degree of correlation between the (very low) output of wind farms in south-east South Australia, and (similarly low) output from...
Network outage, and low wind, combine to drive spot price volatility in the SA region on Thursday 26th April
An unexpected network outage in the south-east of South Australia restricts supplies from Victoria at a time of low wind supply in South Australia and results in the dispatch price spiking to $14,200/MWh from...
An explainer about electricity demand [take 1]
Following from a steady stream of questions we receive in relation to a range of our products (but in particular with respect to "the RenewEconomy Widget") we've invested some time to put this post...