"Victorian outage sent power prices soaring"

25th July 2008

Duncan Hughes - in The Australian Financial Review - wrote on the price jump seen in the mainland regions of the NEM on Wednesday 23rd July.

With one of the three 500kV transmission lines linking the Loy Yang and Hazelwood power stations already out of service for planned maintenance, a second transmission line tripped causing the total output Loy Yang A and Loy Yang B to drop to 2,200MW. Following this, NEM-wide demand grew to 32,443MW, and prices spiked in Victoria (reaching VOLL), Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia.

Paul McArdle, managing director of global-ro(a)m, which monitors national energy prices, said: "Tasmanian prices were at this stage separated from the mainland prices as the National Electricity Market Company (NEMMCO), which operates the market, constrained the Basslink - a 600 MW link between Tasmania and Victoria - because the transmission capacity from the Latrobe Valley was not capable of carrying the flow".

To read the full article, please see either:
1)  The digital copy of article (PDF) retrieved from afr.com; or
2)  A copy of the article (PDF) as seen in The Australian Financial Review print publication.

The events surrounding the price spike on the 23rd July 2008 have been illustrated in more detail with screenshots from NEM-Watch^TM in an article at WattClarity.com.au - our electricity market blog:

VOLL Pricing on 23rd July 2008
http://wattclarity.com.au/Public/Article.aspx?aid=34