Month: February 2006

Providing insights to help explain why smart electricity meters are being encouraged

In his article in February 2006, Nigel Wilson from The Australian has quoted our CEO, Paul McArdle in his article “Smart new meters to cut power” in February 2006. Mr Wilson sought insights from Paul in relation to news that Australian household would be encouraged to use smart electricity meters to cut electricity bills and reduce pressure on governments to build new power stations:

Queensland company Global Roam, which monitors electricity generation, said last week total demand for electricity in Queensland and NSW was 21,079 megawatts, while total available generation was 20,090MW.
 
Managing director Paul McArdle said the only reason lights were not going out was that the Snowy hydroelectric scheme was generating at near capacity and sending all its production into NSW.

Journalist refers to Global-Roam to provide an explanation for supply shortage

Rod Myer from The Age has sought insights from Global-Roam to help explain the fragility of Australia’s power supplies after electricity prices in New South Wales and Queensland spiked to nearly the limit – $10,000 per megawatt hour. In his article, he refers to Global-Roam to explain the reason for the supply shortage:

Generation cuts in very hot conditions led to record demand levels for the second day in a row.

So dire was the situation in NSW that in mid-afternoon generation output, at just over 10,000 megawatts, was over 200 megawatts below demand.

The shortage appears to have been caused by plant failure and planned outages in NSW and Queensland. About 700 megawatts of production appeared to drop out in both states, according to information from power market software producer Global-Roam.