"Power price surge gets users hot, bothered"
25th February 2008
Duncan Hughes, journalist in The Australian Financial Review wrote this article (Power price surge gets users hot, bothered) about volatility experienced on Saturday in Queensland (co-incident with extreme temperatures of above 40 degrees):
To read the article, please see either:
1) The news release at the Fin Review; or
2) A PDF copy of the release.
Some interesting points:
1) Since the start of the NEM, trading (i.e. 30-minute) prices in QLD
had risen above $9000/MWh on only 5 occasions - of these,
2 were on Friday 22nd and 1 was on Saturday 23rd
2) On Saturday, QLD prices were above $1000/MWh for 5 consecutive hours,
and demand was almost the same as on the previous day.
3) Further analysis reveals that
QLD
spot prices have very rarely been volatile on Saturdays, as shown
in a chart generated by NEM-ReviewTM
(for further information about NEM-Review, please refer to the product
portal at www.NEM-Review.info).
4) This chart also shows that the demand peak on Saturday
was 400MW higher than the Saturday demand peak for summer 2006-07.
Note that the high prices experienced in Queensland on 22nd and 23rd February were analysed in more detail, with an article concerning these spikes posted on our electricity market blog:
WattClarity.com.au