NEM demand tragic and occasional WattClarity guest author Allan O'Neil drills into an apparent discrepancy in AEMO's demand calculations following the 1 July 2026 transition of the Basslink interconnector from MNSP market participant to Regulated status.
This is the 2026 edition of our annual review into Q2 spot prices, where we find that average prices fell sharply in all NEM regions compared to Q2 2025, but more importantly, duration curves are changing shape.
The Market Price Cap increased to $23,200/MWh on 1st July 2026. This spike (at 14:20 on Monday 13th July 2026 in Tasmania) was the first experience of this.
After some initial teething issues, from the 16:05 dispatch interval (NEM time) on Thursday 2nd July 2026 a newly regulated Basslink interconnector has begun transferring flows.
On Tuesday last week Linton wrote about ‘Basslink on track to operate as regulated interconnector from 1 July 2026’. In part because we might want to refer directly to it later, we’ll note that at 23:58 at the tail end of yesterday (Tuesday 30th June...
The greatest difference, pre and post July 2025, is in the flows from Victoria to Tasmania.
Belatedly noting that it was on 18th May 2026 that the AEMO published this ‘Basslink Conversion to Regulated Transmission Network Service Provider 1 July 2026’ Go Live Plan here.
The AER has determined the revenue that Basslink can recover for the Basslink transmission cable for the 2026-30 period, operating as a regulated service.
Earlier this afternoon/evening we saw Tasmania’s spot price and multiple Raise FCAS services spike to (or near) the Market Price Cap for two dispatch intervals, with Basslink's flow, import/export limit also halting.
We follow on from A 292MW drop in "Market Demand" in Tasmania, on Saturday 16th August 2025 enlisting this "Part 2" to understand the sequence of events using 4-second data.
Earlier today we posted an article about Tamar Valley CCGT getting a run. We should also have noted about Basslink flows, which we have done here.
An agreement restraining how Basslink is bid into the energy market has ended, resulting in changes in bidding and energy flows.
After rejecting an earlier proposal, the AER has today approved the conversion of Basslink into a regulated transmission service.
We already noted this a few times recently, but we thought it would be worth separating out as its own article under the ‘Energy Literacy’ category, as it’s likely we’ll be referring back to it increasingly in future.
In the second half of this two-part case study we look at a timeline of the Snowy 2.0 project, and discuss the history of mega-projects in the NEM.
An initial walk through afternoon volatility seen today (Fri 14th June 2024) in Tasmania.
In this article we look again at Tuesday 13th February 2024 (Victoria's ‘Major Power System Event’) and sum up the impact of the event on net exports from Victoria over a 14-hour period, but particularly around ~13:08 when the towers were downed.
A short article to record a question from a client that we did not have time to investigate further today.
The very fast FCAS markets started on 9 October 2023 and now a Basslink outage presents a confusing situation for required and enabled levels.
Prompted by a LinkedIn update by Vedran Kovac (at Hydro Tasmania) we've taken a quick look at the supply mix in Tasmania during the current week.