Coal-fired unit performance has improved markedly from the ‘dog year’ that was 2022
Following the recent release of the review of 2024 Q2 (and belated release of the review of 2024 Q1) here’s some updated statistics on coal unit performance.
coal-fired power
A similar trended view of the aggregate production from Coal-Fired Generation across the NEM through 2024 Q2
Taking the ‘worm line’ cumulative trend recent Q2 periods (used for wind, hydro and gas-fired power), we now apply this to coal-fired generation during 2024 Q2.
A 20-year trend of large instances of Aggregate Raw Off-Target (AggROT) across 44 x coal units to 31st Dec 2023
A first article today (falling out of analysis for GenInsights Quarterly Update for 2023 Q4) presenting a long-term trend of the incidence of large instances of Aggregate Raw Off-Target across the 44 x operational coal units currently operating in the NEM. A hypothesis as to the cause of recent changes, and some questions …
That’s all folks: the last unit of Liddell Power Station closes
Liddell Unit 1 ramped down it’s output to 0MW at roughly 10:30am this morning, signaling the full retirement of Liddell Power Station.
A closer look at coal-fired generation availability
Tweet at your own peril A quick mea culpa: after squinting at an ez2view layout early this morning I dashed off a tweet suggesting that six of AGL Energy’s eleven coal-fired generation units were offline – three at Bayswater, two…
Some real data for Eraring Power Station (from soon-to-be-released GSD2021)
As a first article on WattClarity following Origin’s ‘Notice of Closure’ announcement about the future of Eraring Power Station, here’s some statistical data (from the upcoming GSD2021) to help with the broader conversation.
Why is QLD short of generation capacity, on Tuesday 1st February 2022?
A quick look at the coal units that are currently offline today in the QLD region, in the lead-up to the tight supply-demand balance.
Status update, on availability of the 48x remaining coal units across Q1 2021
Using an in-development (but soon to be released) widget in ez2view we take a look at forecast availability for coal units in NSW, VIC and QLD for the critical, and normally volatile, Q1 period 2021.
What’s up with the fleet of 16 x coal-fired units in NSW?
Following a week where several days saw price volatility in NSW (with this being so extreme that Reserve Trader was triggered on Thursday 17th December) we’ve taken a look at the comparative performance of coal units across the NEM (and particularly in NSW) compared to prior years.
Report of the Liddell Taskforce
A short article providing access to the much-talked-about report.
The (slow) decline of coal
Questions from several readers prompted this quick look at the long-term trend of coal generation.
Stanwell unit operation on 12th October 2019 delivers most negative ‘aggregate Raw Off-Target’ for the 2019 year for ‘all Coal’
This is the 2nd of 4 Case Studies to follow on from Tuesday’s main article (summarising results across 105,120 dispatch intervals through 2019 for ‘all Coal’ and ‘all Wind’ groupings). In this case, let’s look at the ‘worst’ case, in aggregate, where coal units over-performed compared to dispatch targets.
Investments in increasing the flexibility of Coal-Fired Power
Some operations at Stanwell Power Station unit 1 in the past couple weeks caught our attention, and are presented as a useful illustration of some concepts related to flexibility of power generators (in this case, coal-fired power).
Who’s responsible for those negative prices?
Rapidly growing solar PV output has been widely tagged as the cause of low and even negative prices in Queensland. But in any market it’s the behaviour of ALL participants that determines price outcomes. Guest author Allan O’Neil takes a closer look at recent NEM bidding.
17-year trend of aggregated coal unit unavailability as from the Generator Report Card
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.
Five different aspects of assessing the “dependability” of coal-fired power (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.
The death* of “baseload” and rise of “cycling”
A quick article highlighting how the trend in aggregate number of unit starts, across the whole of the NEM, highlights the scale of one of the core underlying changes (and challenges) facing us in the NEM’s energy transition.
Factors contributing to an unforeseen price spike in NSW at 16:15 on Thursday 31st January 2019
Taking a brief (well, actually longer than intended) look into the various factors that delivered a price spike above $10,000/MWh on Thursday 31st January in NSW – and thinking through the implications for one particular Demand Response client, and for the broader market.
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.
When the NEM’s Largest Generating Unit Trips …
A follow-on to my earlier article of a couple weeks ago, looking at another instance where a team effort was required to counter a drop in system frequency following the loss of generation at a large power station (this time the single unit Kogan Creek power station – the largest single unit in the NEM).