The month of March has been another significant month as Australia has not been immune from the global upward energy price pressures, by experiencing an unparalleled surge in energy costs for the forthcoming Australian winter, which has flowed through to forward prices for the next few years.
1.0 Overview
The highlights for the month were:
- our special feature provides an insight into the expected price impact facing the Victorian Default Offer and the Deemed Market Offer applicable for small market customers
- market news was dominated by significant progress on renewable projects, battery energy storage systems, emerging technologies and hydrogen projects, while corporate PPA's were popular
- QLD and NSW average March spot price set a record, while the Risk-of-Change was showing a downward tendency
- QLD and SA were the most volatile spot price Regions
- Negative 5-minute prices continue for VIC and SA
- Weather impacts the intraday price and Operational Demand trends
- Snowy Hydro was active containing extreme spot prices in NSW, and spot price offers from black-coal generation has strategically changed
- solar farms in SA and NSW became connected, taking total connections to 404MW of wind and 273MW of solar this year
- gas powered generation was at the highest level in the past 6-months, and black coal in QLD was at the highest level in a year
- significant baseload outages were evident in NSW
- forward prices for FY-22/23 surged in all regions, but most predominantly in QLD and NSW
- forward prices for the next 3-years across all Regions are at or near, all-time highs
- the arbitrage between forward markets and Q1-22 spot market had big winners and losers
- gas spot prices strengthened, and the LNG forward markets are very strong to at least the end of 2023, before easing
- LGC prices strengthened in most forward years
- weather outlook is warmer than average in the southern States, and wetter than normal in the northern States
