Electricity market suspension to be lifted as supply resurges
Australia’s energy market operator will lift the unprecedented suspension of trading on the electricity market after it confirmed that the “risk of any shortfall has reduced markedly”.
AEMO chief executive Daniel Westerman said on Wednesday generators had been working hard on resolving the crisis and a “step by step” exit from the suspension would begin early on Thursday morning.“The first step will take place at the end of the trading day today and that is 4am tomorrow morning [Thursday] when we will allow the market to set the price again. The second step will happen 24 hours after that, when we will be able to formally lift the market suspension.
“Our gas-fired fleet across Australia ... is running seven times the volume compared with the same period last year.”AEMO said it had seen a “clear improvement” in market conditions, including 4000 megawatts of generation returning from outages in the past week.