ROAM Insight

Exposed to the electricity market?

We provide the key answers to the big questions in these uncertain times in ROAM Insight. This report combines state-of-the-art modelling with expert electricity market knowledge to provide a forecast of future electricity prices in the National Electricity Market (NEM).

This fifteenth issue of ROAM Insight focuses on the carbon pricing mechanism included in the recently passed Clean Energy Legislative Package. Other big ticket issues examined include the impact of sharply rising gas prices across the NEM, and the Enhanced 20% by 2020 Renewable Energy Target. Impacts on electricity prices and generation mix throughout the NEM are studied with ROAM’s usual scrupulous attention to modelling detail. The report includes:

  • Pool Price – Wholesale spot price forecasts for three scenarios – Expected, High and Low;
  • Carbon Price - Impact of various levels of carbon price on the electricity market;
  • Individual generators - Generator production volumes and spot market revenues for each individual generator in the NEM;
  • Gas demand - Demand for gas, as gas-fired generation rapidly grows;
  • Renewable generation – Capturing the effect of intermittent generators on the market and the existing generation fleet as renewable energy grows.

ROAM Insight represents the pinnacle of ROAM Consulting’s forecasting efforts, involving many hundreds of hours from our team of analysts to understand and model every facet of the NEM, from wind and solar generator intermittency, through transmission constraint equations to participant behaviours.

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The details:

ROAM Insight provides a comprehensive forecast of the next 6 years for the National Electricity Market (2011-12 through 2016-17). There are three scenarios which we examine in this year’s publication:
  • Expected
  • High
  • Low

The three cases relate to three plausible futures, with demand, gas pricing and carbon pricing varied according to the scenario. Specifically, the high scenario uses the Treasury’s ‘high’ trajectory for carbon pricing, combined with increased domestic gas prices as the LNG export market opens the door for international price parity across all NEM regions. The low scenario uses the legislated carbon price floor after the end of the fixed price period, while also examining the impact of lower demand forecasts. The proposed expansion of the Heywood interconnector between South Australia and Victoria is included in all scenarios. The impact of demand growth on the supply side is also carefully considered, with lower demand resulting in delayed installation for some new entrants. Furthermore, the renewable energy portfolio continues to expand to meet the 20% by 2020 Enhanced Renewable Energy Target. The ROAM Insight report examines the following information:

  • Pool price forecasts
  • New generation developments throughout the NEM
  • Forecast generation volumes for each individual thermal and renewable project in the NEM
  • Spot market revenue (net of carbon price) for all generators ($M pa)
  • Average revenue (net of carbon price) for all generators ($/MWh)
  • Trends in inter-regional trading illustrated through average annual interconnector transfers as well as flow duration curves
  • Gas usage for gas-fired generation (annual and instantaneous demand)

The ROAM Insight Data DVD

Complementing the ROAM Insight report, the ROAM Insight Data DVD is an optional extra, providing the opportunity for the reader to get their hands dirty with the wealth of modelling data the ROAM Insight team has produced. All of the dispatch data for every half hour period in the three cases is available on the disc. This includes individual half hourly generation, regional prices and transmission flows across interconnectors. The data is delivered as a library of comma separated value files (CSVs), so an analyst can use virtually any software or process he or she might prefer to interrogate the data. Also provided is a fully configurable Excel-based tool (the same one our analysts use to make the charts in the report) to interact with the raw data so you can quickly and easily do most of the summary tasks you might wish for, including tables and charts showing:

  • Annual averages
  • Peak and Off peak annual averages
  • Monthly and Quarterly averages
  • Monthly and Quarterly peak and off peak averages
  • Duration curve data (including price duration curves, generation duration curves and flow duration curves)
  • Time of Day averages
  • A straightforward method to interrogate actual half hourly dispatch values themselves

The ROAM Insight Data DVD provides the keen analyst an opportunity to interrogate the modelling data to a level not practical for presentation within a textual report, or to focus on those pieces of information most relevant to the user.

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ROAM Insight Back Catalogue

To check out previous editions of ROAM Insight click here.