A 292MW drop in ‘Market Demand’ in Tasmania, on Saturday 16th August 2025
A quick first look, following the loss of 292MW of 'Market Demand' in Tasmania to 14:11 (NEM time) on Saturday 16th August 2025.
All Posts
Eraring Power Station in the news, again … might stay open (even) longer
Briefly recapping some of the news pertaining to Eraring Power Station over the past two days.
Submissions due today (Thu 14th Aug 2025) on the AEMC draft report ‘Review of WDRM’
A belated note that the AEMC published a draft report on their review of the (nearly 4 year old) WDRM initiative - and noting that submissions close today.
Turbine availability at Bulgana wind farm
We use the elements available dataset to better understand turbines available at Bulgana in recent months.
Submissions closing tomorrow (Wed 13th Aug 2025) to AEMO consultation on ‘Primary Frequency Response Test Guidelines for Semi-Scheduled Plant’
Worth noting, as I've just become aware, that submissions close tomorrow on AEMO's consultation on Primary Frequency Response (PFR) Test Guidelines for Semi-Scheduled Plant
Basslink flows over the past 18 days
Earlier today we posted an article about Tamar Valley CCGT getting a run. We should also have noted about Basslink flows, which we have done here.
Tamar Valley CCGT gets a run (late Monday 11th August 2025)
Monday evening 11th Aug 2025 a ‘unit start’ alert in the ‘Notifications’ widget of ez2view with respect to the TVCC201 unit triggered. We take a look.
Commencement of (testing) operations at Hunter (Kurri Kurri) GT in NSW
We saw first output from the HUNTER1 unit (the first of two at Snowy Hydro's new peaker) on Sunday 27th July 2025. So we're looking a little further, in this article.
Reece Unit 1 returns to service after outage (coincident with fire onsite) … but Unit 2 outage lengthens
On Sunday 3rd Aug 2025 there (appears to have been) a fire at Reece Power Station, and both units tripped. We saw REECE1 return to service Friday evening, but REECE2 looks set for a...
Recapping operations at Waratah BESS (including enablement for SIPS) … to August 2025
The Waratah Super Battery System Integrity Protection Scheme (SIPS) was enabled by TransGrid at last Friday 1st August 2025. This prompts this look back on operations thus far.
Guest Authored Posts
How the NEM BESS fleet is operating on peak days, and how to be a savvy operator
In this guest article, Matt Grover from Fluence draws on operational data and real-world trading experience to unpack how Australia’s grid-scale batteries performed across three June 2025 peak days — and what capabilities belong...
Why Gladstone’s prospective closure reveals a new kind of NEM failure
With the Queensland state government’s new energy roadmap due out tomorrow, Greg Elkins highlights how distorted signals and state interventions expose a new NEM failure.
Detailed Analysis
5 FAQs we’re asked about the Generator Report Card (for discussion at AIE this evening)
We've been invited by the Australian Institute of Energy (AIE) to speak this evening in Sydney about some of the lessons learnt in the process of completing our Generator Report Card. Here's some context...
Villain #5 – not focusing on the real problems
Fifteen months after first speaking at Clean Energy Summit about the train wreck that's ongoing in terms of our mismanaged energy transition (and coincident with another industry gathering in the form of the AFR...
Analytical Challenge – In a complex system like the NEM, it’s almost always numerous factors/changes that combine to produce an outcome
All too often people (including us sometimes, unfortunately) are quick to attribute some particular outcome to a single contributing factor. Almost always this is an over-simplification.
Analytical Challenge – remembering that it’s impossible to know motive (but does not stop us guessing)
Highlighting the temptation to ascribe motivation to others - despite the fact that we understand that we can never know for sure.
If I were going to perform an objective review of what happened last Thursday 18th and Friday 19th, here’s a couple things I would look into…
A starting list of all the factors I would like to delve into, in order to perform an objective review of what happened last Thursday and Friday in Victoria and South Australia
Analytical Challenge – avoiding Recency Bias
Flagging the ongoing challenge of not extrapolating from recent performance to infer that "things" will always be that way.
Analytical Challenge – determining “what might have otherwise been?”
One of the challenges in analysis is to even be conscious of the need to ascertain "what might have otherwise been".
A collection of some core analytical challenges
A collection of articles speaking to some core analytical challenges. Others are categorised elsewhere – like my prior thoughts on three reasons why forecasting is a mug’s game.