Alarms in one of our NEMwatch dashboards alerted me to the plunging level of Scheduled Demand seen this afternoon in the the Victorian and South Australian regions of the NEM – a new record low point for South Australia.
Last week saw more in a growing series of exits, and asset write-downs, amongst new entrants in the supply of renewable energy within the NEM. Today on WattClarity I ponder whether we have been setting them up to fail due to the nature of support provided to these new entrants. What is your perspective?
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.
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 during which the South Australian region formed its own frequency island following the transmission line damage. A period we’ve called an ‘accelerated accidental experiment’.
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….
A back-dated article, looking back at the two ERM rule change requests which, when passed by the AEMC, had great effect in expanding transparency in the NEM in relation to generator availabilities from 20th August 2020.
Jonathon Dyson of Greenview Strategic Consulting uses the Generator Statistical Digest to highlight FCAS revenue results, contingency recovery and regulation costs for 2019, and help explain why it is critical for us all to understand 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 SA as a group would have paid out roughly twice in contingency raise FCAS costs what they earned from selling energy”
Summer 2019-20 is not yet done, but already we have seen some extremes in temperature in different places – which have led to different concerns. Today I use the GRC2018 and GSD2019 to take a look at what the implications for this actually are.
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 in conjunction with the transmission damage and Heywood trip.
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 of flows.
It feels like a lifetime ago, already, but I do vaguely remember that we released our Generator Statistical Digest 2019 last week, on Tuesday 28th January 2020. All the tasks that I had scheduled to follow on from that launch…
Cautioning readers that I am a novice at reading frequency data in this manner, I take a first look at how the frequency in Melbourne and South Australia varied at the time of the transmission outage at 13:24:30 on Friday 31st January 2020.
In order to help us (internally) map out all the different threads to explore in terms of what happened on Friday 31st January 2020 on a remarkable day in the NEM, I’ve identified a few of the key threads here over the weekend. More articles to follow as time permits….
With the benefit of more data available today, can piece together why there was the sudden drop into LOR2 territory on Saturday 1st February 2020 (something that alarmed me, and resulted in AEMO directing a participant to make capacity – just withdrawn – available again).
I’ve snuck into the office on Saturday to start the process of piecing together some of of the different aspects of what happened yesterday to follow on from Friday evening’s short article (this will take quite a while to do…
Today (Fri 31 January 2020) saw NEM-wide demand reach levels never seen before (excepting 29th January 2009). This was just the start of the white knuckle ride.
Guest author, Allan O’Neil does a masterful job with limited time in reviewing some of the goings-on in the NEM (particularly VIC and SA) on Thursday 30th January 2020
Published at 12:02, this is a view looking forward to the expected (very high) peak in electricity demand across the NEM this evening.
A brief overview of a stressful afternoon/evening in the NEM, where a confluence of events (heatwave-driven high demand, low wind, coal unit trip, etc…) drive LOR2 low reserve condition notice in both VIC and SA, and gear AEMO up to call on Reserve Trader (yet again!)