Post: Australia’s wholesale power prices double

Australia’s wholesale power prices double

Wholesale power prices in Australia’s National Electricity Market (NEM) continued to rise in the first three months of 2022, more than doubling the cost a year earlier, the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) has said.

In its latest AEMO’s Quarterly Energy Dynamics (QED) report, published on 29 April, AEMO said wholesale electricity prices in the averaged $87/MWh for the first quarter of 2022, up 67% from Q4 2021 and 141% on Q1 2021, driven by increased demand, coal generator outages and higher electricity-generating fuel costs.

Source: AEMO

Renewable energy, meanwhile, grew its share of the market to more than one-third, pushing carbon emissions from the largest polluting sector to new lows. Wind and grid-scale solar output increased 743MW from Q1 2021 levels to a new quarterly record of 4,190MW, along with increases in small-scale solar (460MW), gas (271MW) and hydro (42MW). Declines were seen in brown coal (304MW) and also black coal generation (374MW), which hit its lowest Q1 average in two decades.

NEM quarterly average operational demand increased to 21,506MW, 1.5% higher than that of last year’s very mild Q1, driven by 3.3% growth in underlying demand across all regions, offset by a 24% increase in average distributed PV output.

NEM emissions hit a record first-quarter low at 30.4MtCO2e, 4% lower than a year ago despite increased operational demand, driven by lower coal generation combined with continuing growth in wind and grid-scale solar output.

GridBeyond Senior Business Development Manager Diogo Cabral said: