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.
Read MoreOn 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 a number of issues including the depressed prices experienced in winter 2008.