News

Here at ROAM Consulting we are continually growing and changing, expanding our team and developing our knowledge and skill base to remain at the forefront of the energy industry and meet the demands of our expanding client base.

Watch this space for updates on major market developments and ROAM's ever increasing capabilities.

June 2010

NEM Minimum Reserve Level determination

Over the past nine months ROAM have been working closely with AEMO to recalculate the NEM Minimum Reserve Levels (MRLs) which are established to guide the market in achieving the NEM Reliability Standard. The NEM Reliability Standard states:

The maximum permissible unserved energy (USE), or the maximum allowable level of electricity at risk of not being supplied to consumers, is 0.002% of the annual energy consumption for the associated region or regions per financial year

Determining operational minimum reserve levels to achieve this is a little like finding the proverbial needle in a haystack. Throughout the period this assessment was interleaved with the AEMC Review of Reliability Standard and Settings and Review of the Operational Arrangements for the Reliability Standards, both of which ROAM are honoured to have been involved in. A third parallel assessment saw AEMO finalise the 2010 generator forced outage data collection, with the latest available information incorporated into the MRL determination studies. Click here to see the final report as it is available on the AEMO website.

ROAM and AEMO are continuing with the review of short term reserve levels in response to the AEMC Review of the Operational Arrangements for the Reliability Standards.

 

March-May 2010

The ever changing RET landscape

Throughout this period ROAM have been researching and modelling the potential impacts of the expanded Renewable Energy Target (eRET) and associated legislation changes on the operation of the National Electricity Market. ROAM’s investigations suggest that there are potentially both hidden costs and benefits in increasing the level of renewable generation throughout the NEM to meet the eRET.

Click here to see the assessments which ROAM have provided to the Clean Energy Council in support of their ongoing investigations into increasing the development of renewable energy throughout the NEM and Australia.

 

April 2010

Review of the Reliability Standard and Settings

ROAM has worked extensively with the AEMC and the Reliability Panel and market stakeholders in reviewing the NEM Reliability Standard and Settings, incorporating a review of the Market Price Cap (MPC, previously referred to as VOLL) and the Cumulative Price Threshold (CPT). Establishing the necessary MPC to balance the risk to consumers of high energy prices against the risk of insufficient investment in supply in the market, leading to supply shortfalls has been a challenging task with similarly impassioned support for increases and reductions in the MPC from stakeholders.

The AEMC Reliability Panel published their final report on 30 April 2010. Click here to jump to the AEMC website to see the ROAM report and the Reliability Panel final report.

 

March 2010

ROAM reports in the public domain

Interested in reading more of what ROAM has to offer? We now have links to our public reports directly from this website. Click here for a comprehensive listing of currently available public reports.

 

February 2010

Happy Birthday, ROAM!

This month ROAM Consulting celebrates its tenth year of existence. We have grown from three staff in the beginning to our current raft of experts numbering seventeen.

It has been a great challenge working with market participants, the market operator, regulators and government, predominantly within the east Australian NEM with our focus on modelling both strong and weak relationships between the physical power system and the design and rules of the competitive commercial energy market and associated services.

ROAM has also provided similar consulting services to market participants, operators and regulators in the Western Australia energy market and other isolated systems across Australia and New Zealand and provided full nodal modelling of the significant California ISO electricity market for a large market participant there.

We look forward to continuing to develop our skills in modelling a wider range of aspects of the electricity system from frequency response in the sub-second time frame to our growing specialty in the long term planning horizon taking into account the significant issues surrounding greenhouse has emissions in the stationary energy sector.

 

Management Team Development

In conjunction with ROAM's 10th anniversary one of ROAM's founding employees, Ben Vanderwaal has been appointed Managing Director, with the long term Managing Director, Dr Ian Rose taking on the role of Executive Chairman. As ROAM continues to grow in numbers we look forward to developing the management team over the next few years and continuing to maintain our focus on provision of high quality consulting services backed up by strong Information Systems to cater for our growing modelling applications.

 

January 2010

Welcome back Jenny

ROAM is very excited to welcome Dr Jenny Riesz back into our Brisbane office, where she will be leading our Climate Change and Renewable Energy team. Jenny spent the latter half of 2009 working with the government of the Solomon Islands on international climate policy, culminating in joining their delegation for the critical climate negotiations at the United Nations meeting in Copenhagen in December.

 

August 2009

New Team Members

We are pleased to welcome two new members into the ever-expanding ROAM Consulting team.

Rico Zhang joins Jason in our Sydney office as part of our Sofware Development and IT team. Rico holds a Master of Computer Science (Advanced) from the University of Wollongong and has work experience in both China and Australia.

The Brisbane office welcomes Nick Culpitt, who is coming onboard as a trainee analyst on a part-time basis, whilst he completes his studies in Science and Commerce at the University of Queensland.

 

July 2009

ROAM Consulting Sydney Office

ROAM now has a permanent presence in Sydney, with Information Systems Manager Jason Merefield heading up our new office in Chatswood. The office location and contact details can be viewed here.