AEMC staff joined AEMO’s annual graduate field trip this year – introducing our future leaders to professional relationships they will need across the market bodies. Thank you to the renewable generators involved for opening their sites to the biggest group of graduates ever hosted.
In a day trip last week the group visited Snowy Hydro’s generators and pumped hydro schemes, as well as Infigen’s Capital Wind Farm.
Trip highlights included:
- travelling down a kilometre long tunnel at Snowy’s Tumut 2 power station in a minibus more than 240 metres underground to view the power station
- seeing Talbingo Dam and Tumut 3’s pumped storage hydroelectric power station in operation
- visiting Snowy Hydro’s control room and active operations, as well as the Snowy Hydro Discovery Centre
- an up close view of wind turbines at the Capital and Woodland wind farms, including a decommissioned blade on the ground.
- learning about the variation in capacity factors across wind turbines and throughout the year, as well as how wind turbines are optimised through an autonomous process of constant feathering and rotating to chase the wind
- learning about the relationship between control room operators and traders, including the additional considerations for hydro operators such as the sequencing of pond fills, large-scale generation (LGC) incentives, and managing environmental obligations when distributing water.
The AEMC would like to thank Brian Nelson from AEMO, Larry Green from Snowy Hydro, and Michael Johnson from Infigen for hosting the trip.
The AEMC field trip participants were Samuel Martin, Ed Hawkins, Mitchell Shannon, Orrie Johan, Oliver Tridgell and Declan Kelly.
