Weekly Report - Trading Week 19/08/2010 to 25/08/2010
Temperature, Actual Demand and Load Forecast
One of the major influences in determining load forecasts is Temperature. Where extremes of temperature are expected, there are normally corresponding variations in demand for energy due to higher use of heating or cooling systems both residentially and commercially. Load Forecasts are also lower on weekends and public holidays due to lower commercial energy use.
The maximum temperatures for this trading week ranged from 16.6°C to 18.3°C. The actual load peaked at 1,377 MWh on the 23/08/10. The actual load mirrored the forecast load for the majority of the week.
Total Participant Supply Limits and Aggregate Bilateral Contract Positions
Bilateral contracts generally make up over 90% of the energy traded. Correlation between bilateral submissions and actual loads is usually heavily dependant on load forecast accuracy.
This week saw the level of planned outages remain reasonably consistent throughout the trading week. The supply limit ranged from 1,957 MWh to 2,152 MWh with the actual load following from the Scheduled System Load for the majority of the trading week.
Net Balancing Market Trades
Bilateral contracts and STEM trading are generally based on the forecast energy requirements of Participants. When the forecast requirements are higher or lower than the actual requirements for a day, this Market energy must be bought and sold in the Balancing market. This graph shows net balancing market trades, determined as the difference between the demand and the total net contract position of all participants. However, it should be noted that individual participant exposure may exceed this amount.
The majority of the balancing activity this week occurred within "balancing supply". The maximum balancing demand for the week reached 123 MWh on the 23/08/10, an increase on last week’s 111 MWh. The maximum balancing supply reached 108 MWh on the 20/08/10, down from last week’s maximum of 173 MWh.
Total Traded Energy
This chart represents a comparison between the total net energy that is traded in Bilateral contracts, the STEM and the Balancing market. Balancing Supply represents cases in which the total contract position is greater than the demand and customers must supply energy back to balancing. Balancing Demand represents cases in which the total contract position is less than the demand and customers must purchase energy from balancing
"Balancing supply" this week totalled 7,081 MWh – a large decrease from last weeks figure of 20,059 MWh whilst the total “balancing demand” this week increased to 4,308 MWh from 1,476 MWh last week. The STEM clearing quantity this week ranged between 32 MWh and 204 MWh, with a total of 32,342 MWh being traded, an increase on last week's total of 27,447 MWh.
STEM and MCAP Comparison
These two charts provide the Short Term Energy Market (STEM) price, the Balancing price (MCAP) and the difference between these. Generally, MCAP will be equal to the STEM price. However, MCAP will be recalculated where the actual demand on the day deviates significantly from the net contract position (Bilateral + STEM trades) of all participants.
The maximum STEM price this week was $47.31/MWh on 19/08/10, down from last week’s maximum STEM price of $49.33/MWh. The minimum STEM price of $8.80/MWh was recorded on 19/08/10, a large increase from last week’s minimum STEM price of -$0.10/MWh. MCAP reached a maximum price of $51.36/MWh on the 25/08/10, which was also quite similar to last week’s maximum MCAP of $50.63/MWh. The minimum MCAP for the period was -$1.66/MWh which occurred on the 19/08/2010, an increase from last week’s minimum MCAP of -$4.40/MWh.
The raw data for this weekly reports is available here.
Previous Weekly Reports are available here.