At lunchtime, on Nov 27th, estimated demand in NSW was around 12,000 MW with a long period of extremely high spot prices:
Fig 1: NSW electricity demand and forecast spot prices at 13:55, screenshot
Fig 1 shows there was already a 10 min price spike warning a day earlier at 17:35, at a demand level of 11,300 MW. As for the give-away price of $1/MWh in Fig 1, the 5 min NEM bidding war (market forces!) can create crazy results, even negative prices.
https://www.aemc.gov.au/rule-changes/five-minute-settlement
Fig 2: NSW electricity demand and a whopping price spike at $17,500/MWh lasting 1 hr
We can clearly see that demand dropped suddenly. Data show it was 885 MW from a peak of 11,295 MW at 15:30 over a period of 50 min. A substantial part of this reduction was 530 MW from 15:55 to 16:05, over just 10 min. The AFR writes in this article:
NSW grid scrapes through power crisis, bigger test ahead
27 Nov 2024
Tomago Aluminium, the country’s biggest electricity user, is speculated to have been asked to temporarily cut back their consumption, sources said. The company couldn’t immediately comment.
https://www.afr.com/companies/energy/aemo-locks-in-emergency-power-in-bid-to-avert-nsw-blackouts-20241127-p5ktwy
This already happened before as shown in this post:
7/6/2021 NSW power spot price spikes May 2021 become regular (part 1)
https://crudeoilpeak.info/nsw-power-spot-price-spikes-may-2021-become-regular-part-1
No lessons were learnt at the time. The NSW continued to promote and approve energy-hungry projects like apartment towers and office skyscrapers.
Even the otherwise energy ignorant NSW government conceded there was a power supply problem but blamed hot weather for the problem.
Fig 3: Weather report from the evening news 27 Nov 2024
Fig 4: Max Sydney temperatures in November 2024
The 30.7 degrees on the 7th created price spikes of up to $15,000/MWh for several hours, but at a lower demand level of 9,200 MW. On average, max temperatures in November were 1.3 degrees higher than in 2023. But on 26th Nov 2023, temps were also 32 degrees, although this was a Sunday with less demand. End November 2020, temps over a weekend exceeded even 40 degrees. So coal powered plants cannot argue they could not finish their annual maintenance before summer and were surprised by an early onset of high temperatures.
NSW Government update on hot weather
27/11/2024
AEMO and the NSW Government are activating programs that ask large government and private organisations to reduce their power use. These actions are expected to be adequate to maintain a reliable supply for NSW consumers, unless there is an unforeseen supply issue or weather conditions deteriorate.
AEMO has arranged a panel of large businesses to voluntarily reduce demand.
The NSW Government is activating two protocols to reduce demand on the energy grid.
First is the Government Energy Action Response which will see NSW Government agencies, local councils, Commonwealth and ACT Government agencies voluntarily reduce electricity use between 3pm and 8pm. Agencies will do this by increasing the set point of air conditioning where safe and feasible, closing blinds, turning off non-essential lighting and turning off equipment when not in use.
Second is Voluntary Demand Reduction which asks four water utilities (Water NSW, Sydney Water, Hunter Water and Central Coast Council) and the City of Sydney, to shift electricity usage to outside peak demand periods.
If it is possible and safe to do so, businesses and households can also choose to make small changes to their electricity use between 3pm and 8pm to help reduce demand on the national grid during the evening peak.
For example, closing blinds, doors and windows to keep out the heat, and delaying the use of non-essential appliances such as dishwashers and pool pumps. If possible, set your air conditioning to 24 to 26 degrees between 3pm and 8pm.
https://www.nsw.gov.au/media-releases/nsw-government-update-on-hot-weather
How naïve it is to even think that closing blinds will solve the deep power supply crisis consecutive NSW governments have manoeuvred us into, pro-actively worsening the supply/demand balance every year – hell-bent to aim at an 8 million Sydney, planning and approving more and more energy guzzling apartment towers and office blocks. More on this later.
Let’s first have a look at which warnings were given and which action AEMO took. I have summarized it in this table:
Fig 5: How events unfolded on Nov 27th 2024
All data are from here: https://aemo.com.au/en/market-notices
The day started off with a LOR2 forecast between 2 pm and 7 pm with a tiny reserve of 5 MW, and a load shedding warning for 4 pm to 5 pm.
AEMO took following actions:
(1) In market notice 121067 at 1:28 pm AEMO issued directives to the Wallgrove battery (Eastern Creek in Sydney’s West) to maintain storage levels of 59 MWh.
Wallgrove Grid Battery
The Wallgrove Grid Battery is one of a handful of batteries in the world trialling the use of synthetic inertia as a service. 50 MW/75MWh. 36 Tesla Megapacks
https://www.lumea.com.au/projects/wallgrove-grid-battery/
Operational report: https://arena.gov.au/assets/2024/02/TransGrid-Wallgrove-Battery-Operations-report-3.pdf
(2) In market notice 121070 at 1:30 pm AEMO issued a direction to a participant in the NSW region. The issue of the direction commences an AEMO intervention event. No details were given who that participant was
(3) In market notice 121083 notice at 2:18 pm to the Munmorah battery AEMO issued directive to maintain storage levels of 96 MWh. This battery is still under testing (no data yet on the NEM
Waratah Super Battery now registered on the National Electricity Market
3 Sep 2024
The Waratah Super Battery is now registered on the National Electricity Market (NEM) and one step closer to powering up.
This comes shortly after the energization of the new Waratah Substation, which connects the 850 megawatt (MW) battery energy storage system (BESS) to the grid (1,680 MWh)
https://www.energyco.nsw.gov.au/latest-updates/waratah-super-battery-market-registration
The battery is located on the Central Coast together with the Colongra Gas plant (OCGT, 4×181 MW) on the site of a decommissioned coal plant (6 km south of Vales Point). The life of the battery is expected to be 20 years.
At 14:30 the LOR2 reserves somehow improved to 509 MW (of 730 MW requirement)
(4) At 15:45 RERT (Reliability and Emergency Reserve Trader) was activated and then implemented at 65 MW. The marginal impact of RERT was shown by Wattclarity:
Fig 6: Impact of RERT compared to market demand
https://wattclarity.com.au/articles/2024/11/rert-dispatched-on-27-november-2024-in-nsw/
5) At shortly before 4 pm, the Tomago alu smelter started load shedding 300 MW for around 4 hrs up to shortly before 8 pm. The smelter has 3 potlines at 300 MW each. The Australian Energy Market Commission thinks that the maximum time a potline can be turned off is 2 hrs 50 min before it starts freezing (which costs $$$ millions to repair).
Demand response in the
National Electricity Market (page 42)
Dec 2020
https://esb-post2025-market-design.aemc.gov.au/32572/1608712640-energy-synapse-demand-response-in-the-nem-final-report-14-dec-2020.pdf
But the Tomago website is much more cautious:
Each shutdown put the smelter several hours behind on its work schedule and the thermal instability took many weeks to recover from.
“We can take a potline off for an hour but beyond that the risk of bringing it back online successfully increases dramatically. In January 2016 a failed restart came within a whisker of freezing that potline.”
https://www.tomago.com.au/keeping-the-lights-on-across-nsw/
So in this case, apparently 2 potlines were turned off for the period of 2 hrs each (1,200 MWh)
Fig 7: Tomago load shedding 27 Nov 2027
https://reneweconomy.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/tomago-outage-891×500.jpg
Turning off potlines is actually a no-no. Note that this exercise cannot be repeated as Governments wish and definitely not for the next weeks.
At 16:45 the above AEMO directions were cancelled and the RERT intervention ended. While the Tomago load shedding still continued. Only LOR1 remained until 8 pm with a 859 MW reserve in case the 2 largest plants with 1,370 MW failed.
This is the power generation by fuel type:
Fig 8: NSW generation by fuel type 27 Nov 2024
Fig 9: NSW power imports from neighbouring States over 3 days
NSW is permanently living beyond its energy means. Imports increased from 345 MW at 16:30 to a whopping 2,090 MW by 19:30. On days when Queensland’s and Victoria’s exports are limited NSW is in trouble.
To be continued. In part 2 , we’ll have a look at the coal plants. In part 3 at renewables, in part 4 at the political debate and planning consequences
