Each year, the Reliability Panel (Panel) undertakes a review under the National Electricity Rules (rules) of the performance of the National Electricity Market (NEM) in terms of the reliability of the power system, the power system security and reliability standards, and other relevant standards and guidelines under the rules. On 1 March 2012 the Panel published the final report of its latest annual review which examines the performance of the NEM in the 2010-2011 financial year. The final report takes into consideration comments raised by stakeholders.

Background

As required by the Rules and the AEMC terms of reference, the Panel has been conducting this annual review since 2006. The scope of the review is to consider the reliability, security and safety of the NEM in terms of performance against the standards and guidelines determined by the Panel under the Rules. That is, the performance being reviewed more directly relates to the bulk wholesale electricity systems and does not include performance at a local transmission or distribution level. However, as the performance of the local networks impact on consumers' experiences, where the information is available, the Panel has included relevant performance results at the local level so that this report may provide a comprehensive overview of power system performance.

In November 2011, the Panel published a draft report for this review. Consultation on the draft report closed in January 2012 and a public meeting was scheduled for February 2012. However, the public meeting did not go ahead due to there being no registered attendees.

The final report sets out the Panel’s findings and assessments and includes additions to address stakeholder comments on the draft report. The Panel notes that in 2010-2011 there was no ‘unserved energy’ (USE) due to reliability events and the USE continued to remain within the reliability standard. Although there were some incidents in the year where the frequency of the system was outside the frequency operating band, none of these incidents resulted in under-frequency load shedding. The Panel’s assessment also includes a review of a number of ‘operating incidents’ that occurred in 2010-2011.

As this is an annual review, the Panel will continue to consider ways in which this work may be carried out to provide more useful and meaningful information to the market.