Collections of events that we see happening in the NEM, categorised in terms of the seasons in which they occur.
This weekend, we have prepared this analysis of the entries we received for our “Peak Demand Forecaster” competition for winter 2009.
In conjunction with this analysis, we thought it would be of interest to also incorporate this chart (generated from a BETA version of the NEM-Review v6 software package) to highlight how the peak NEM-Wide demand unfolded over the previous winters…
We reported previously that a price cap was invoked in Tasmania on Tuesday 16th June because the Cumulative Price Threshold was reached. In official terminology, this was an Administered Price Period (APP). At 04:00AM this morning, NEMMCO released a market notice advising the market that the APP had been lifted…
For only the third occasion in the 10 1/2 years that the NEM has been operational, the Cumulative Price Threshold (CPT) has been reached. Yesterday evening, the CPT was reached in the Tasmanian region.
For those who weren’t aware, Winter 2009 has seen us offer our “Who’s the Best Demand Forecaster in the NEM” challenge – as a chance for the market to redeem itself, following what happened in summer 2008-09 (when the market surprised us all).
We noted yesterday (Wednesday 10th June) that NEM-wide demand climbed past 32,000MW for the first time this winter.
The following evening saw demand climb to similar levels (a peak of 32,054MW at 18:20 – so 35MW higher than the previous night). However the situation on Thursday night was different in two key ways…
On Wednesday 10th June 2009, temperatures plunged across the NEM for the first time this winter, providing a long-awaited dump of snow to start the season, and driving electricity demand high.
Wednesday 28th January saw demand across the NEM jump to unprecedented levels, setting a new record of 34,843MW at 16:00 NEM time. On Thursday 29th January, we saw the demand increase still further, leading to prices that stayed high for much of the day (to the point where the Cumulative Price Threshold was reached in VIC and SA and price caps were imposed), and a relatively small amount of involuntary load shedding occurring in VIC and SA.
The day is not over yet, but we thought you would be interested in the attached snapshot highlighting the first of the occasions on the day when prices jumped to VOLL in SA and VIC as a result of searing temperatures stopping the tennis, and melting VIC and SA into new demand records for each region.
On 19th January, high prices were sustained in SA for several hours, bringing the Cumulative Price within a whisker of the $150,000 threshold, at which prices would be capped.
We watched with interest today as demand crept up in all mainland regions to the point where the NEM-Wide demand rose slightly above 33,000MW for the first time ever, during a summer period.
Given that the holidays are now over (for most of us) and we’re returning back to “normal” life, we thought it would be a good time to provide a brief overview of what’s happened in terms of NEM-Wide demand, to date.
On the 23rd of July, 2008 one of the HWTS – LYPS 500kV Line was down for maintenance when a second one tripped, leaving only one line remaining. This caused NEMMCO to declare the failure of that remaining line the greatest single contingency in the NEM, causing them to buy large amounts of FCAS from generators.
NSW experienced a record summer demand on Thursday 15th January, driven by high temperatures across the state. The extreme weather experienced in NSW followed the extreme weather that swept across South Australia and Victoria only two days beforehand.
Just as had been forecast, Tuesday 13th January 2009 saw hot, dry weather roll in across South Australia, and then into Victoria. The high temperatures caused demand to climb, but not to the level at which NEMMCO had forecast demand to climb over the summer period. As a result we saw the price in SA jump to a level near VOLL at 13:40, and remain there until about 18:00 (i.e. more than 4 hours).
High temperatures in Queensland drive demand up on New Year’s Eve.
A brief analysis of NEM-wide demand and IRPM during the summer months over the past 4 years.
On 13th November, NEMMCO released the final version of its report into the Power System Incident “Unplanned Outages of HWTS-LYPS line on 23 July 2008”
It appears that we spoke too soon when we mentioned on the 22nd July that winter 2008 had been relatively uneventful.
Just over 24 hours from making these comments, we saw prices jump sky-high in the mainland regions, and go the other way (to the negative price cap) in Tasmania.
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.
Our Managing Director spoke at the “Australian Energy & Utility Summit 08” in
Sydney on Tuesday 22nd July 2008, touching on a number of issues including the depressed prices experienced in winter 2008.