The national energy market operator is having to direct electricity generators in Queensland to switch off plants to avoid blackouts, but even that may not be enough to avoid shortages.
Queensland and NSW face possible blackouts on Tuesday after a cold snap pushed winter power demand to a record and prompted regulators to impose price controls on the states’ soaring wholesale electricity prices for the first time.
The situation threatens to deteriorate further as electricity generators struggle to stump up increasingly large sums of money as surety to cover their exposure to runaway wholesale prices through trading positions taken in the National Electricity Market and the Australian Securities Exchange. Apart from people turning to their reverse cycle air-conditioning units in the evening, Queensland’s generation shortfall has not been helped by seven units being offline this week, including a unit at Gladstone power station, B2 at Callide and a unit at Millmerran which all had scheduled outages.Three units should come back online this week, delivering about 1000MW of supply.
Despite the orders, Queensland got close to blackouts early on Monday evening because of a deficit in supply, with the Australian Energy Market Operator warning of a level-three “lack of reserve” notice, the most serious alert. “To maintain power system security and reliability, AEMO is using its powers under the National Electricity Rules, including to direct generators, to alleviate lack of reserve conditions,” AEMO said at 5:15pm.
“AEMO will continue to work with authorities in relevant states and with generators to minimise the risk of disruption to energy users.”
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