Winter 2018 in the NEM

A detailed look at two specific trading periods in the day (Tuesday 24th July 2018) that saw negative dispatch prices occur at the start of trading periods - hence provided a case study for how existing Semi-Scheduled plant respond (especially in combination with transmission constraints and the Semi-Dispatch Cap).

The multi-region islanding event on Saturday 25th August was a very rare event - perhaps the only one's that occurred in the history of the NEM. It has generated plenty of questions - and driven our analysis further. We share some more observations here, and keenly await the draft AEMO report.

Following on from Saturday's islanding event, we use our current interest in AEMO's 4-second SCADA data to prove a little more...

Both the QNI and the Heywood interconnectors tripped around the same time on Saturday 25th August 2018 (not apparent at this time which one was first, and why), leading to both QLD and SA regions being separately islanded from the rest of the mainland NEM. This also contributed to over 1,000MW of load shedding in NSW and VIC, and presumably some frequency excursions in QLD and SA.

A brief follow on from yesterday's post, with the advantage of being able to review yesterday's bids (and rebids) today.

The past week, with wind farm output blowing gangbusters in South Australia (coupled with low demand and System Strength requirements) we seen the "Wind Correlation Penalty" start to bite, with some reactions also beginning to show.

Guest author, Drew Donnelly at Compliance Quarter, uses the review of hedge practices in the wholesale market included in the recent ACCC report as an opportunity to reflect on what approaches they have seen in their work with new entrant retailers

One of our guest authors, Allan O'Neil, takes a closer look at what happened in the South Australian region of the NEM on Monday 9th July 2018

Some brief analysis of today's price volatility seen in the South Australian region of the NEM

Returning to the theme of analysis of Q2 prices (completed in 2017 and 2016 due to Q2 historically being an uneventful period) we see that prices have backed off from the "off the charts" level of 2017, but are still much higher in all regions than most other regions. In some cases results are second worst in 20 years.

The start of some analysis that helps to identify the variety of factors that combined to give a shaky balance between supply and demand in NSW last week.