Australian Energy Regulator and Australian Energy Market Operator release their reviews of the wholesale electricity market for Q3 2024
| The Australian Energy Regulator (AER) and Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) recently released their quarterly reports on the wholesale electricity market for Q3 2024. Both reports highlighted that the quarter was one of two halves, with high demand, outages, and at times lower renewable generation putting upward pressure on pricing during the first half of the quarter, followed by mild weather and increased renewable generation resulting in lower prices in the second half. Over the quarter, volume weighted prices ranged from $114/MWh in Queensland to $201/MWh in South Australia; these were heavily influenced by a high number of price periods in excess of $5000/MWh, which typically occurred during periods of low wind and network outages. In the second half of the quarter, negative pricing was at near record highs, particularly in Victoria and South Australia. The AER’s report also highlighted that almost 1500MW of new capacity came online in Q3, mostly batteries (600MW) and wind (729MW) with a small amount of solar (116MW), which represented the greatest amount of new capacity seen since 2019. |
Extreme weather events in South Australia and New South Wales down powerlines and force Broken Hill offline
| Extreme weather events on 16 and 17 October in South Australia and New South Wales resulted in significant damage to transmission network infrastructure, heavily impacting the mining town of Broken Hill. In NSW, the downing of the ‘X2’ transmission line between Buronga and Broken Hill resulted in the town’s islanding, causing intermittent black outs lasting more than a week as aging back-up diesel generators were unable to run smoothly. With the nearby solar and wind farms unable to run without being connected to the rest of the grid, Broken Hill Battery was reconfigured to run in islanding mode and power was restored tentatively until the transmission line was rebuilt. These events marked at least the 7th instance of transmission towers collapsing in the National Electricity Market (NEM) since January 2020, highlighting the growing need to invest in and strengthen the transmission network as the pace of the energy transition increases. |
October sees continued breakthrough in renewable records
| Favourable weather and generation conditions led to renewables contributing a record of around 47% of total electricity generation in October. Very high levels of rooftop solar saw peak renewable penetration above 75% for the first time in the NEM, with a record level of 75.3% set on 21 October. This came with relatively little contribution from wind generation, highlighting the potential of the record being beaten again before the end of spring. At the same time, coal power saw its lowest ever level of generation, as rooftop and utility scale solar forced the technology to turn down in the middle of the day. The growth of rooftop solar was evident across the NEM, hitting 113% of state demand in South Australia, whilst New South Wales, the largest market in the NEM, hit a record peak of 55.2% of demand. |
