In order to help us (internally) map out all the different threads to explore in terms of what happened on Friday 31st January 2020 on a remarkable day in the NEM, I’ve identified a few of the key threads here over the weekend. More articles to follow as time permits….
Today (Fri 31 January 2020) saw NEM-wide demand reach levels never seen before (excepting 29th January 2009). This was just the start of the white knuckle ride.
A first (and perhaps only – as this took longer than initially planned) walk through some of the interesting points of what happened yesterday (Sat 16th Nov 2019) when South Australia islanded from the rest of the NEM with the trip of the Heywood interconnector.
The multi-region islanding event on Saturday 25th August was a very rare event – perhaps the only one’s that occurred in the history of the NEM. It has generated plenty of questions – and driven our analysis further. We share some more observations here, and keenly await the draft AEMO report.
Following on from Saturday’s islanding event, we use our current interest in AEMO’s 4-second SCADA data to prove a little more…
Both the QNI and the Heywood interconnectors tripped around the same time on Saturday 25th August 2018 (not apparent at this time which one was first, and why), leading to both QLD and SA regions being separately islanded from the rest of the mainland NEM. This also contributed to over 1,000MW of load shedding in NSW and VIC, and presumably some frequency excursions in QLD and SA.