Guest author Allan O’Neil provides this handy explainer on how generators’ contract positions affect their bidding decisions and can make negative spot prices pay off, at least in the short term. Very useful for those readers not actively involved in wholesale trading in helping to understand why some conspiracy theories might not match reality.
Rapidly growing solar PV output has been widely tagged as the cause of low and even negative prices in Queensland. But in any market it’s the behaviour of ALL participants that determines price outcomes. Guest author Allan O’Neil takes a closer look at recent NEM bidding.
The run of prices at $0/MWh and below is continuing in Queensland region this week as we pass into spring (many dispatch intervals today down as low as the Market Price Floor at -$1,000/MWh). This begs a few questions…
The Queensland region of the NEM saw a new all-time record for peak electricity demand today (Wed 13th February 2019) by several different measures. A bit later in the evening we take a brief look at a few different factors.
Currently (as at Monday morning 11th February) AEMO forecasts indicate that Queensland electricity demand on Wednesday afternoon will come very close to an all-time record.
A quick look at AEMO’s current forecasts for Friday (prompted by a few conversations externally)…
A quick look at the situation today, where generation in central and northern Queensland was constrained down in the middle of the day, driving prices higher.
A quick first look at the way the AEMO is currently seeing the supply/demand balance for the Queensland region through summer and Q1 2019 – with the “out of left field” possibility of industrial action making it even more interesting.
The growth of Large Solar in the NEM has been phenomenal, and a sign that things are changing quickly in the Australian energy industry. The chart attached is the maximum…
Some conversations with new generation developers about their prospective developments in northern Queensland has prompted some analysis to help them understand the size of the addressable market for them.
Temperature forecasts are for hot weather in Queensland early this week – which means AEMO is forecasting high demand in the QLD region. With this, they are alerting on a forecast LOR2 Low Reserve Condition warning. We take a look…
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.
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.
Some further thoughts on what we’ve termed a “Solar Correlation Penalty” which point-view of some specific dispatch intervals seems to suggest is occurring
A comment made by TransGrid at the Energy Networks 2018 conference today jolted me to update my (somewhat) outdated paradigm of declining demand.
Already we are seeing the highly correlated output of solar PV deliver interesting challenges for the NEM – both to the project proponents themselves, and also to the “everything else” that supplies what’s left of the underlying demand from electricity from any source.
A new peak Scheduled Demand and Operational Demand in Queensland today with Scheduled Demand still over 9,100 MW after 8 PM.
Queensland experienced a new record for Scheduled Demand for electricity today – but what’s particular staggering is how late in the day it happened!