12 days of blackouts for Victoria? big high-price and blackout events for Victoria, in summer - as usual

First 14 of 14 paragraphs shown An El Nino was expected to keep winter dry in the SE, and a 2250MW generation deficit was expected in Victoria over 12 days of February, 2011. The graph showed the days of likely drought-induced high prices and blackouts. See the forecast days of blackout events, above. A catastrophic drought still covered Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia; this suggested very high prices and very high risk of blackouts for summer.
May spread to South Australia and Tasmania: If the weather was hot, this could spread to South Australia and Tasmania, as Victoria would probably cease to export to other regions.
NSW generators plan peak-period outages: AEMO noted "this is due to the assumed reductions in water availability to two Victorian generators and a New South Wales generator due to the drought as well as continuing major outages of two generating units in New South Wales throughout the study period".
June rains top NSW northern generation storages: The NSW June big wet had filled NSW Hunter dams, and, northern New South Wales Generators power stations were now less exposed to water shortages.
MSW plant withdrawn at peak period? The study reported 'assumed reductions in water availability to two Victorian generators and a New South Wales generator due to the drought as well as continuing major outages of two generating units in New South Wales throughout the study period'.
AEMO releases June blackout risk reports: The June 2009 reports - with a data end-date 1 May 2009, did not include the NSW June-rains, which had filled NSW northern storages, but Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania water allocations at 1 July showed most of the south east had zero water allocations; and what was worse - SE 'essential- needs' water, was about 50 per cent below essential needs, in most areas. Towns would need to buy water; and stock may have no drinking water as farm streams and dams ran dry.
NSW power plants water-resource high: On 1 July NSW Hunter and Central Coast regions got 100 per cent allocations for 2009-2010 water year.
Blackout risk reports: The 30 June 2009 - published simulation studies provide forecasts of how much customer load might not be able to be met (blackout risks) during the two year period from 1 May 2009 to 30 April 2011.
Blackout risk potential: The report detailed average monthly regional energy demand not able to be met in megawatt hours (MWh) if water was low or average, and recorded:
- where USE (blackouts) exceeded Reliability Panel Standard of 0.002% in a region;
- based on water storage levels recorded on 1 May 2009; with the use of
- energy and demand maximum demand projections in September 2009 forecast (SOO).
Victorian blackouts likely for summer: “The unserved energy is forecast to be in excess of the Reliability Panel standard in Victoria”.
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