Watching the AEMO dashboard as a hot summer day hits
Is this the summer crunch-time that the National Grid managers have been fearing?
Today things are not running smoothly in the green states of Victoria and SA where prices this minute have hit $14,000 per MWh (megawatt hour) or $14 per kWh (kilowatt hour). These are wholesale prices.
Right now heads of major industries are watching the dashboard, turning off everything they can turn off, or switching on the diesel generators or counting hundreds of thousands or even millions being added to their bills if production cannot stop.
Demand Management schemes (a form of load shedding) will be running to reduce demand — air conditioners will be remotely switched down.
How much of the productive brain power of Vic and SA is distracted from more useful tasks today?
The AEMO has put out an Actual Lack of Reserve Notice (LOR1) saying that Victoria is 300 MW short: “The contingency capacity reserve required is 1,100 MW (megawatt). The minimum reserve available is 815 MW.”
Another notice of a “non-credible contingency event” (a code for “something broke”) reports that a busbar, transformer, and line have tripped or opened in Victoria, unplanned.
In Victoria
In SA
The notices and forecast for tomorrow are worse
With a few hot days in a row, as buildings get warmer and tempers get shorter, people use more electricity. Hence even if temperatures don’t rise, the longer a hot spell goes, the higher the electricity demand.
This is the 30-minute graph including price and demand, and the forecasts for tomorrow. As far as I can tell, often the shocking forecasts which look like being 3 solid hours of $14,000 electricity will instead resolve to smaller shorter spikes. But millions of dollars of productivity is likely to be burned.
In Victoria
In SA
Read more at JoNova
I can never fathom who Liberals love to throw morals to the wind and engage in a free for all. It slike they dont have a part of their brains that produces common sense…or something…..the other thing is that Liberalism is destructive to families…so in real terms, Liberals are actually a self limiting organism,a s they will die out if they follow thier own credo.
Unfortunately, their lack of thought and stupid behaviour impacts those of us who have to live near them…..
I’ve always thought that crowding creates liberals. Stack people on top of each other and you’ve got a pile of ’em. Apparently some Californian’s want to secede from L.A. and it’s metropolitan area. Ontario wants to secede from Toronto. I’m sure there’s more examples.
Those things are harmful to Birds,Bats and Whales and yet the Eco-Wackos support them becuase Eco-Wackos are total nuts more nutty then 625 Acres of walnut trees in July