Articles by Allan O'Neil

NEMDE nightmares – parallel pathways and clashing constraints

Prompted by a question by a client in a training session for a new ez2view user, guest author Allan O’Neil has written 2,940 words to explain the price outcome in one particular dispatch interval for one particular region (19:05 on Tuesday 11th February 2025 in South Australia). Strap in, because it’s a good illustration of why the simple ‘merit order’ bid stacking model is sometimes (often!) way too simplistic!


Some remarks on Victorian demand

Allan O’Neil takes a closer look at Victorian electricity demand on Sunday, February 2nd — which stood out as an unprecedented anomaly when looking at the history of weekend demand in the region.




Watt scarcity?

Guest author Allan O’Neil examines some recent episodes of price volatility (particularly 30th July to 5th August 2024) and whether they were driven by a shortage of supply, or other factors.



Missing megawatts and phantom generation

Seven days ago, AEMO notified the market of a Scheduling Error from 24th Jan 2024 to 7th March 2024. A client asked us what it meant – so guest author Allan O’Neil has helped to explore and explain.





Summer 2023-24 demand – high or low?

Inspired (or provoked) by Paul’s earlier article noting ‘NEM-wide demand has been quite low through summer 2023-24 (at least to date)’, guest author Allan O’Neil takes a look at how aggregate consumption stacks up for this summer, compared to prior.



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 of inter-regional settlements residue accumulations, market efficiency overall, and the energy transition.



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 author Allan O’Neil takes a look.


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 Liddell Power Station.


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 of curtailment. Allan differentiates these as ‘forced curtailment’ and ‘economic offloading’


Liddell’s ghost stalks the market

During early morning Monday 1st May prices spiked in the NSW quite unexpectedly. Guest author Allan O’Neil takes us into the complexities of the EMMS and NEMDE to help us understand the mechanics of how this happened.


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 author Allan O’Neil takes a look at what is different.