With summer officially starting last Tuesday, the National Electricity Market (NEM) is about to go through the season that typically has the highest demand. Market tightness usually seen during summer sometimes pushes power prices to their maximum level – the Market Price Cap (MPC) – currently set at $15,000/MWh.
In this Chart of the Week, we investigate recent trends in sustained MPC events and provide commentary on drivers behind these trends as well as what to expect going forward.
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Low carbon generation
In the last decade, the rapid decline in deployment cost of variable renewable energy (VRE) generation capacity has given renewables an advantage over fossil fuels for new builds as highlighted in ‘Renewable Power Generation Costs in 2020’ report from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). In the report, Australia has...
Low carbon generation
In our previous ‘Chart of the week’ in November 2020, we reviewed the increasing percentage of causer pays cost that solar generators bear due to their generation profiles and how this results in them paying significantly more of the causer pays cost as a ratio of the generation they provide. More than...
Commercial and market outlook
In recent years, movements in marginal loss factors (MLFs) have received significant attention in the National Electricity Market (NEM). Many renewable projects in remote areas have experienced material MLF reductions as more supply connects nearby. For example, the MLF for Broken Hill Solar Farm saw a whopping 50 ppt drop...
Low carbon generation
Events in Queensland on 25 May 2021 tested the resilience of the Queensland demand/supply balance with 3GW of coal generation suddenly coming offline due to a loss of generation at the Callide power station. According to AEMO’s preliminary report – released on 1 June 2021 – on the event, the outage also...
Low carbon generation
This Chart of the week examines the historical captured prices of selected technologies within NSW for the last 10 years. Figure 1 shows the historical rolling monthly average of captured prices of various technologies within New South Wales against the monthly generation of variable renewable resources including small scale rooftop....
Low carbon generation
In most states, electricity retailers determine and set their own rooftop solar feed-in tariffs (FITS). A major driver is the wholesale energy prices, which continue to decline midday. For more information, please refer to our previous Chart of the Week issue 76. As the solar weighted wholesale energy prices reduce or become...
Low carbon generation
We have seen a dramatic shift in FCAS price fortunes over the past year or so, going from all-time highs of ~$229.3mn in Q1 of 2020 (due to the separation event) to only ~$40.1mn in Q1 2021. Since 2019 we have also seen regulation raise prices decline from robust prices...
Low carbon generation
In April, the NSW government opened consultations on “specific urgent and mechanical policy details” on regulations needed to implement its Electricity Infrastructure Roadmap released late last year. The Roadmap aims to unlock 12GW of new renewable energy capacity from selected Renewable Energy Zones (REZs) with an additional 2GW in storage...
