Tag Archives: Zibelman_Audrey

Climate Action, Climate Change & Sustainability

Keeping the lights on

August 25, 2019 Brian 4 Comments

Last week began with a front page article in the AFR Victoria prone to blackouts this summer as grid wilts and ended with an AFR editorial How can Australia have third-world power blackouts?

The answer to that question is easy – we don’t have to avoid third-world blackouts because we don’t have them. The more important question is, why is Michael Stutchbury’s head in such a muddle? Stutchbury is editor in chief of the AFR and appeared on ABC Insiders this morning. Other panelists asked whether he had read “the report”. Continue reading Keeping the lights on →

Climate Action, Technology

AEMO wants ‘demand response’ as strategic reserve

May 30, 2018 Brian 13 Comments

You will recall that after the closing of Hazelwood Power Station at the end of March 2017 fears were held that the 2017-18 summer would see extensive blackouts. AEMO, the Australian Energy Market Operator, was tasked to assemble a strategic reserve to keep the lights on.

AEMO assembled a reserve of 1150 megawatts mainly “demand response” capacity with capital cost approaching zero, but the mechanism the agency had used called the Reliability and Reserve Trader or RERT, can’t be automatically rolled over for the summer of 2018-19. And perhaps it can’t be done at all, because the rule-maker, the Australian Energy Market Commission, has changed the rules governing the RERT so that the mechanism can only be used on 10 weeks notice in an emergency as a last resort, which is simply impractical.

So what is going on? Continue reading AEMO wants ‘demand response’ as strategic reserve →