AEMO Ageing Coal-Fired Generation Reliability (NEM)

AEP Elical recently supported AEMO, Australia’s Energy Market Operator, with an assessment of the reliability of the coal fired power stations in the National Electricity Market (NEM).

This work supported AEMO in delivering on its requirement to forecast electricity supply reliability in the NEM over a 10-year period, which is published in AEMO’s annual Electricity Statement Of Opportunities (ESOO) publication.

Generation from coal fired power stations is currently a fundamental part of the NEM’s firm generation capacity. However, there are a number of these stations that are approaching the end of their design life. These can pose a challenge to the operation of a modern power system, particularly one with increasing penetration of intermittent solar and wind generation. In recent times there have been several short notice and simultaneous forced outages of thermal generation in the NEM that provides base load generation capacity.

In this complex assessment, the AEP Elical team used a forward-looking methodology based on theoretical probability to establish reliability parameters and models used for assessing the reliability of the stations through to end of life. We were supported in this study through discussions with the power generation companies, who provided their invaluable insights of both technical and market challenges.