Cold weather during June 2008 saw electricity consumption soar in the Queensland region of the National Electricity Market – delivering some spot price volatility.
Seeking some insights into what was happening in the market at the time, we fielded calls from journalist Duncan Hughes (of the AFR). Our CEO (Paul McArdle) assisted by
In his article “Power prices put business on back foot” Duncan quotes Paul as explaining one of the causes:
“demand was growing at 100MW every five minutes, which … necessitated … NEMMCO to schedule more expensive (peaking) generation as a temporary measure to meet high anticipated growth rate in demand…”
Duncan also quoted Paul as noting how demand response was active in response to the price spikes.