The collapse in Queensland renewable energy investment – the canary in the coal mine
Guest author, Tristan Edis, looks particularly at the Queensland Region of the NEM, and an almost complete stop in the development of new renewables projects.
guest author
New supply in the NEM – what’s happening?
Today’s guest author, Ben Willacy, examines current trends in commisioning activity and new grid connections for new supplies in the NEM.
Summer reliability back in the headlines
Guest author, Allan O’Neil, provides us an update today on what we can see about summer 2019-20 (in the physical market, and the financial market), now that it is only just around the corner.
Let’s Talk Losses
Guest author, Tom Geiser, discusses the different approaches to loss factors amid recent market proposals.
Generator Hedging in Australia’s National Electricity Market
Guest author, Warwick Foster, discusses the different methods in which generators may hedge in the NEM
Insights: How do weather patterns impact wind REZ correlations?
RepuTex Energy builds on the Generator Report Card 2018 to provide insights into how different weather patterns impact wind production and the implications for system diversity and portfolio risk.
Combined Solar & Storage Economics: Creating a credible grid scale business model in the National Electricity Market
Guest Author, Warwick Forster, looks at designing a combined solar & storage business model for the NEM
NSW LOR and AEMO request for Generator Recall information
Yesterday, Tuesday 29 October 2019, AEMO issued a Market Notice requesting Generator Recall information from participants in the NSW region. This was issued at 15:27 on Tuesday 29 October 2019, and came after numerous Lack of Reserve notices, the first…
Network connection traps for new generation developers
Guest Author, Nathan Potter, analyses the challenges and complexities of new generator development in the market and outlines common traps that can be avoided.
Almost three years on – reflections on Frequency Control in the NEM
Guest author (and power system control specialist), Kate Summers, looks at what’s changed since she published a paper on frequency control in the NEM back in January 2017.
Lessons learnt in bringing new wind and solar to commercial operations stage
Our guest author Maria Cahill, offers insights and details lessons learnt over the past two years since moving to Melbourne from the UK to set up K2 Management’s Australian office.
How Retailers Use Contracts to Hedge Customers
Guest author, Warwick Forster, provides an explanation of some of the common ways that retailers hedge their risk exposure in the National Electricity Market
More on those negative prices – how do contracts affect bidding behaviour?
Guest author Allan O’Neil provides this handy explainer on how generators’ contract positions affect their bidding decisions and can make negative spot prices pay off, at least in the short term. Very useful for those readers not actively involved in wholesale trading in helping to understand why some conspiracy theories might not match reality.
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.
ESOO Unboxing
Without resiling from last week’s criticism of how the headlines from AEMO’s 2019 Electricity Statement of Opportunities (ESOO) were communicated, it’d be churlish for me to fault the depth of disclosure and data sitting behind those results. Literally tens if…
ConfUSEd by the ESOO? You’re not alone.
I’d rather not add to the number of conspiracy theories in circulation, but I wonder if there’s a conspiracy to make understanding our electricity system in general, and its reliability in particular, as difficult as humanly possible. There’s no doubt…
War of Losses
Some thoughts from Derek Chapman, from Adani Renewables, in conjunction with two rule change requests at the AEMC relating to Marginal Loss Factors.
Some very preliminary details of the possible causes of the Argentinian Blackout
Some very preliminary information (based on an internet search) about factors that might have contributed to the blackout in Argentina and neighbouring parts of South America this week.
The Network Investment Paradox
Guest author, Drew Donnelly, compares case studies of Argentine and Australia to highlight risks in under and over-investment in network infrastructure
NEM spot prices remained stubbornly high in 2018 – what were the drivers?
The surge in NEM spot prices since 2015, and related impacts on contract and retail prices, have been extensively discussed and analysed in many forums, from ACCC inquiries to Twitter. The underlying reasons for the rise are well understood and…