Articles by Paul McArdle

One of three founders of Global-Roam back in 2000, Paul has been CEO of the company since that time. As an author on WattClarity, Paul's focus has been to help make the electricity market more understandable.



Paul McArdle Thursday, April 24 2008

Cost of congestion to energy users

For the EUAA’s Members Meeting (held in Brisbane on 24th April 2008), our Managing Director was invited to provide of a précis of the presentation he previously provided at the “QLD Energy” conference (on 12th March 2008).

In particular, comments made by Paul with respect to the proposed upgrade to QNI – which was topical at the time of the conference, given that Powerlink and TransGrid had released their analysis of several upgrade options in the same week as the conference.

As a result of the presentation, Duncan Hughes wrote an article about the potential cost to energy users of the upgrade, and published this in the Australian Financial Review on 13th March 2008.

Given the magnitude of the numbers reported, this issue has proved to be of significant issue to large energy users – hence the invitation to present at the Member’s Meeting.

Paul McArdle Monday, April 7 2008

Links to external reports relating to the blackout

Following from the blackout, several government bodies, and industry organisations completed reviews of the events leading up to the blackout. For completeness, these reports (at least, those we are aware of) have been listed in this article.

Paul McArdle Friday, March 28 2008

March 2008 – Massive Heat-Wave hits SA & Victoria

In March 2008 (after summer had officially ended) South Australians were forced to endure a record 15 straight days of temperatures climbing above 35ºC. Victorians also experienced extreme heat for a number of days. This sweltering weather forced demand through…

Paul McArdle Wednesday, March 26 2008

Summer 2006-2007 – Miscellaneous Articles

Over the period of summer 2006-07, we prepared a number of articles about other occasions of note in the NEM (in addition to the blackout of 16th January 2007, which has been written about separately).

Paul McArdle Wednesday, March 12 2008

Analysis of price volatility in the QLD region over summer 2007-08

Our Managing Director was asked to speak at the “Queensland Energy” conference in Brisbane on Wednesday 12th March – specifically addressing the topic of price volatility in the NEM.

To provide the basis of discussion during the conference, we focused our analysis solely on Queensland region (to make the topic more manageable).
In our review of volatility in the Queensland region, we focused specifically on 3 core attributes of the market: Queensland dispatch prices; NEM-Wide Instantaneous Reserve Plant Margin; and the concept of “Economic Islands”.

Paul McArdle Friday, February 29 2008

Summer 2007-2008 – how did it impact on the NEM?

Summer 2007-08 was really a story of two different summers, with very mild temperatures experienced in the north (resulting in low levels of demand) but with sweltering temperatures in the south (and huge demand as a result). This does not…

Paul McArdle Tuesday, January 1 2008

Drought of 2007

Here’s some articles about the impact of the drought on the NEM – culminating in a stepped change in prices, and changes to dispatch patterns, etc…

Paul McArdle Friday, June 22 2007

Background information to the shortage of capacity in winter 2007

Following from the interest generated in the article published in the AFR, we completed some analysis of the trend in IRPM over the history of the NEM up until June 2007.

The results of this analysis revealed that at no time before 2007 had the IRPM even dropped below 12% and that, except for the 2-day period (19th and 20th June) the IRPM had not dropped below 10%.

Paul McArdle Thursday, June 21 2007

Winter 2007 – NEM-wide shortage of capacity

For two remarkable winter evenings in 2007 (19th and 20th June specifically) NEM-Wide Instantaneous Reserve Plant Margin (IRPM) plunged to the lowest levels ever seen in the NEM (a mere 7.6%) as generators were caught short of capacity by a…

Paul McArdle Tuesday, January 16 2007

16th January 2007 – Bushfires and Victoria’s blackout

Victoria experiences a large blackout in the afternoon and evening of 16 January 2007, when bush fires cause three main transmission lines to trip. This created chaos throughout much of Melbourne, and represented perhaps the most significant stress the NEM…

Paul McArdle Tuesday, January 16 2007

11th January 2007 – first spike in demand above 30,000MW

There was a temperature-driven spike in demand across the NEM later in the week beginning Sunday 7th January – culminating in the summer’s first demand peak above 30,000MW (on Thursday 11th January).

On this occasion, the spot price spiked above $1000/MWh in Queensland, NSW, Snowy and Victoria,