Hot weather drives Victorian demand (somewhat) higher today – a rare excursion above 9,000MW

It’s been a reasonably boring summer for Victorians, at least in terms of where electricity demand has been reaching – and for those in the running to win a handy portable BBQ by having a go at forecasting the peak Victorian demand for this (extended) summer period.

This can be summed up by the following trend of raw trading (30-minute) data from NEM-Review highlighting (in comparison) how much higher the peak all-time record for Victoria was some years ago:

2016-02-23-trended-Victoria-summertodate

Following the closure of Alcoa’s Point Henry aluminium smelter some time ago, combined with other factors, it was not really expected that we’d see massive new peak demand records being set in Victoria (see further discussion here and here from last summer).

However today we did note in the NEM-Watch dashboard (which runs 24x7x365 in the office to enable us to keep an eye on what’s happening in the NEM whilst focusing on other things) that demand was pushing up into the orange zone today.  The following snapshot from 15:00 NEM time (so 16:00 in Victoria on daylight savings) shows the demand pushed up over 9,000MW for only the second day this summer:

2016-02-23-at-15-00-NEMWatch-VIC9068MW

The other occasion was back on 13th January when the NEM-wide demand rose above 32,000MW.

Note with respect to what happened in summer 2014-15 that this level is higher than where the peak landed across the equivalent four months of last “summer”.  Is this as high as it will get this summer?


PS – summary stats from today:
1) Victorian demand peaked at 9,280MW (dispatch target) in the 16:00 dispatch interval
2) NEM-wide demand reached as high as 31,992MW at 15:50
before the cool change swept through…


About the Author

Paul McArdle
One of three founders of Global-Roam back in 2000, Paul has been CEO of the company since that time. As an author on WattClarity, Paul's focus has been to help make the electricity market more understandable.

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