May in the NEM (a review of 10 years of history)
One of 12 articles on the months past in the NEM – in which we examine the trends in price and demand across the NEM for the month of May.
low ‘Instantaneous Reserve Plant Margin’
Articles tagged with ‘low Instantaneous Reserve Plant Margin’ are catalogued here.
See this page for an explanation of IRPM … how it’s calculated, and what it means.
February in the NEM (a review of 10 years of history)
One of 12 articles on the months past in the NEM. February has seen multiple price spikes over the years often as a result of high demand caused by the summer heat, but also during times of surplus available generation capacity.
High Prices and Low Reserves in NSW
An illuminating view of the NEM during the high NSW prices on 31st October 2008, illustrated with screenshots and a dynamic video from the new NEM-Watch v8.
Volatility in the market over winter 2007
Our Managing Director spoke at the “Australian Energy & Utility Summit 08” in Sydney on Tuesday 22nd July 2008, touching on issues including the extremes of price volatility that were experienced over winter 2007.
“Power Prices Jump in Eye of the Storm”, from the AFR
Following from an alert to the situation provided by NEM-Watch, Duncan Hughes published an article “Power Price Jump in Eye of the Storm” that mentioned the extremely low levels of NEM-Wide Instantaneous Reserve Plant Margin (IRPM) that had occurred for a 60-minute period over both days.
Background information to the shortage of capacity in winter 2007
Following from the interest generated in the article published in the AFR, we completed some analysis of the trend in IRPM over the history of the NEM up until June 2007.
The results of this analysis revealed that at no time before 2007 had the IRPM even dropped below 12% and that, except for the 2-day period (19th and 20th June) the IRPM had not dropped below 10%.
Winter 2007 – NEM-wide shortage of capacity
For two remarkable winter evenings in 2007 (19th and 20th June specifically) NEM-Wide Instantaneous Reserve Plant Margin (IRPM) plunged to the lowest levels ever seen in the NEM (a mere 7.6%) as generators were caught short of capacity by a…
21st November 2006 – demand spike in NSW
There was a temperature-driven spike in demand in NSW on Tuesday 21st November 2006.
These sweltering temperatures combined with bushfires to cause localised blackouts in the Sydney city area, as reported in the Sydney Morning Herald in the article “Power jitters as heat bites”.
2nd February 2006 – NEMMCO’s forecast from 17th January
This article was written prior to 2nd February and drew from the insights gained with our NEMforecastTM product to highlight the looming issue of the tight supply/demand balance forecast for 2nd February 2006.