high temperatures

Four headline challenges amongst a very busy summer 2019-20

My participation in yesterday’s session about ‘Energy Technology – performing under (heat) stress’, organised by the Australian Institute of Energy, was an opportunity to reflect on what I saw as the Four Headline Events that gave example to a great many challenges we will have to grapple with as this energy (and climate) transition gathers pace.






Out of the blue, an LOR2

Considering the extraordinary weather, bushfires, and a couple of large Victorian generators still not back from long term repairs, last week was probably less eventful for the NEM than might have been expected, but it certainly wasn’t incident-free. A very…



What happened yesterday (Fri 20th Dec 2019) in the Victorian Region? A first look…

A first look back at yesterday (Friday 20th December 2019) in the Victorian region – where we saw extreme temperatures, high demand across VIC and SA and (perhaps because of high temperatures) a large discrepancy open up between forecast Wind Availability and actual. This would have contributed to the surprise LOR2 announcement and commencement of RERT negotiations.




Degradation of performance at high temperatures

We’re taking a much, much deeper dive into generator performance at high temperatures (for all DUIDs operational across the NEM) to see how each one of them, individually, is affected by high temperatures. Guess which one this “mystery DUID” is and we’d look forward to providing some form of prize…










It’ll be hot in parts of the NEM tomorrow (Saturday 6th Jan) but don’t expect demand to be too high – and don’t be trigger happy on the Emergency Demand Response!

Weather forecasts tell of an expected hot weekend on Saturday (in Melbourne & Adelaide) and then Sunday (in Sydney) – which has led to some news articles talking about “searing heat across the southeast putting energy supplies under pressure”. Let’s not get carried away – it looks like the levels of demand will be pretty moderate.