SA Islanding: Managing solar on the island
In our third guest authored post this week, Blake Ashton from SA Power Networks talks about the SA islanding event that occurred just over twelve months ago - how SAPN managed solar curtailment, and...
Guest Author
Do we really need Eraring when we’ll have 5,500MW of batteries by 2026?
Tristan Edis from Green Energy Trading discusses whether a surge in renewable energy projects and battery capacity would be sufficient to fill any reliability gap before (and after) Eraring's scheduled closure.
What’s happening around Wagga?
Guest author, Allan O'Neil, takes a detailed look at how VIC1-NSW1 transfer capability has been limited frequently due to constraints related to the 051 line in southern NSW, and what it means in terms...
An ESOO snippet – how effective are different technologies at enhancing reliability?
In his second article about the 2023 ESOO, guest author Allan O'Neil takes a look at what the AEMO has published with respect to various options for firming capacity to increase the reliability of...
Stock up on candles?
Last Thursday (31st Aug 2023) the AEMO published the ESOO 2023, including forecasts of some possibility of unserved energy in Victoria and South Australia this coming summer 2023-24 (above the Interim Reliability Measure). Guest...
Engineering the transition and control of electricity
Kate Summers gave the keynote address for the "System and market design for a high renewables future" session at the CEC's Clean Energy Summit earlier this week. This article contains the full text of...
Let’s talk about Inertia
Inertia is an important concept to understand as the technology mix in the NEM evolves during the energy transition. In this article, Jonathon Dyson talks about the importance of inertia and highlights an example...
Too Early to Say?
Guest author, Allan O'Neil, publishes some analysis for WattClarity on price and generation mix changes apparent in the NEM coincident with (but not wholly caused by) the closure of the last remaining units at...
How dispatch works … it’s much more than just a bid stack
New guest author, Ryan Esplin progressively builds a more precise model of the NEMDE dispatch process to illustrate why the stylised 'Merit Order' bid stack model is increasingly not enough to explain dispatch and...
Renewable curtailment – forced and not quite so forced
Inspired by the recent article by Tristan Edis (who referenced the GSD2022 in analysis of curtailment of some wind and solar farms), Allan O'Neil follows on with more analysis of the two main types...
Australia’s Renewable Energy Boom – The Good, The Bad and the Downright Ugly
Tristan Edis from Green Energy Markets takes a deep dive into generator performance across the NEM. He provides his take on which wind and solar farms have outperformed and underperformed, through the recent renewable...
Timestamping Renewable Energy Certificates is a Bad Idea.
Tom Geiser argues against time-stamped Renewable Energy Certificates - and how the concept could impact trade, accuracy, market signals and other factors.
Bye X5, Hi X5
From 16th March 2023 the infamous 'x5 constraint' has been split into two. We quickly showed previously that the design of the Left Hand Side (LHS) does not vary. In today's article, valued guest...
The NEMs frequency behaviour – how is it going?
Following recent online discussions, Bruce Miller has produced this in-depth analysis of frequency behavior in th NEM.
Has adding wind and solar upped the need for FCAS in the NEM?
Allan O'Neil digs through historic FCAS enablement and utilisation levels to examine whether there is an increasing trend in recent years.
Price/MWh Harvest in the 2022 Generator Statistical Digest
Nick Bartels of Greenview Strategic Consulting uses the price energy harvest metric from our GSD2022 data extract to examine the recent performance of each fuel type within the NEM.
Investigating last Friday’s frequent frequency swings
Allan O'Neil provides an explainer about how small deviations in supply and demand are managed in the NEM, in order to help us understand the apparent swings in frequency that we noted in QLD...
The GSD2022: A labour of love
David Leitch of ITK Services provides his top insights from the GSD2022, which he has used to look into generation mix, constraints and firming.
Farewell Liddell
Guest author, Allan O'Neil, takes the release of the GSD2022 as an opportunity to take a look at the past 10 years of performance of the four-unit Liddell Power Station (one unit closed in...
How closely monitoring households’ energy data can unleash their solar outputs and (possibly) make them more money
UQ's Richard Bean and Neil Horrocks discuss a project they are involved with that would enable network operators to see household voltage and current data in real time.