Victoria’s snap lockdown drops demand forecast by ~1000MW
In the middle of the day today (Fri 12th Feb) VIC Premier Dan Andrews announced a snap lockdown - here's a quick look at how this was (quickly) added into the ST PASA Operational...
Headline Events
Some key events in the NEM that carried long-term implications
Incomplete thoughts – potential risks to the NEM in relation to COVID
Only 52 days after I initially envisaged being able to have this article published, a couple things today have prompted me to post this drain-dump of concerns that have been jangling around in my...
Comparing spot revenue performance across wind farms
In a sneak preview of part of next Thursday's Clean Energy Council webinar, Marcelle compares the spot revenue performance of wind farms across the NEM.
Quantifying pandemic effects on power demand in Australia’s National Electricity Market
Guest author, Mark Todoroff, examines operational demand figures for each region to quantify the impact of COVID-19 on the NEM.
What effect has Stage 4 Lockdown in Victoria had on electricity consumption in the NEM?
In this 5th article in a series, we look at the impact on electricity consumption of Stage 4 Lockdown associated 'State of Disaster' in Victoria
Case Study of 16:20 on 28th September 2016 (aggregate Raw Off-Target +894MW for Semi-Scheduled units)
This 8th case study in this series presents tabular results for all Semi-Scheduled DUIDs which were operational at the time of the SA System Black event.
Mapping the impact of COVID-19 on electricity demand in Victoria
Jill Cainey from Energy Networks Australia maps the impact of COVID-19 on residential and business energy consumption in Victoria.
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...
Difficult to determine (i.e. minor) reduction in daily NEM-wide aggregate ‘Underlying Consumption’ in 2020, the (first?) COVID year
For several reasons I've updated my view of how daily aggregate Underlying Electricity Consumption has been trending across the NEM in this 'Year of COVID'.
AEMC issues 3-month delay to the commencement of Five Minute Settlement
The rule change that delayed the start of 5MS to 1st October 2021
Careful with the ‘doomsday claims’ that COVID responses have (or will) massively reduced aggregate underlying electricity consumption in the NEM….
… because the evidence currently suggests that this is just not the case (in this article I explore and explain further)
Do you know the difference between Virtual Inertia and Fast Frequency Response?
Our guest author Stephen Sproul looks at how the Dalrymple Battery Energy Storage System (BESS), currently the only source of virtual inertia on the NEM, responded to the November 2019 SA islanding event.
Electricity demand as a Performance Metric, in the age of coronavirus
This started as a consideration of how applicable 'change of electricity demand' is as a general metric for communicating the impact of coronavirus (and measures taken to address it). However it is morphed into...
1st thoughts on possible impacts of COVID-19 on Australia’s National Electricity Market (NEM)
Like everyone else, we're grappling with how COVID-19 will impact on us personally - and also in terms of what we do at work. Here's a few initial thoughts about the types of impacts...
Surviving on the island – again
Another islanding event separated the SA region from the rest of the NEM yesterday (Monday, 2nd of March). Allan O'Neil investigates what happened before the event and possible causes.
Reviewing the ‘accelerated accidental experiment’ thrust on SA during the islanding (31st Jan to 17th Feb) – a 1st review
As time has permitted, I've invested some time to prepare this first stage of a review of what went on during the period from 31st Jan 2020 to 17th Feb 2020 - a period...
South Australia islanded again – Monday 2nd March at 12:00
Two weeks ago (Monday 17th February) a 'temporary fix' was put in place to reconnect SA with VIC following the transmission line outage that began on 31st January 2020. Well, we've islanded again today....
Don’t Forget About FCAS!
Guest author, Allan O'Neil, takes a look at what's happened in the (islanded) market for FCAS services in South Australia over the past two weeks with Heywood out of service. He notes: "generators in...
Rooftop Solar PV systems did trip in SA on Friday 31st January 2020 in conjunction with the Heywood trip
Investing some time over the weekend with a some higher-speed data on output of rooftop solar PV systems across VIC and SA reveals some interesting observations about what happened on Friday 31st January 2020...
January 31 Followup – How did the lights stay on in South Australia?
Guest author, Allan O'Neil delves further into understanding what happened in response to the transmission tower failures on 31st January 2020 that sent system frequency in South Australia and led to a large reversal...