The Australian Energy Market Commission’s Reliability Panel today released a new standard for procurement of ancillary generation services which are needed to restart the power system following widespread blackouts.

This determination follows a year-long public consultation process with energy users, industry, jurisdictional system security co-ordinators and state and territory governments.

The system restart standard governs the level and reliability requirements for services which are needed to turn the grid back on after a large-scale blackout.

Reliability Panel Chairman, Neville Henderson, said today that extreme blackouts, also called black system events, can seriously affect public safety and business continuity.

“It’s important there are enough restart services to quickly restore power supply to generators across the system,” Mr Henderson said.

Most generators are not capable of independently starting up again if electricity supply to the system is lost. Some generators have specialised equipment which allows them to start independently of the system. The market operator AEMO contracts with them to provide system restart ancillary services for the rest of the system.

“The Reliability Panel has set a new, more stringent standard for procurement of these services which is tailored to the specific requirements of each electrical sub-network,” Mr Henderson said.

“It has also made a number of recommendations to improve the process generation and load restoration”

These recommendations are for:

• AEMO and network businesses to develop detailed load restoration plans and communicate them to jurisdictional governments so that state emergency plans can manage the impact of a black system event.
• The market operator AEMO to strengthen its engagement with key stakeholders, particularly transmission and distribution network service providers, so that market participants are adequately informed as to the amount of system restart ancillary services which have been procured.
• System restart service providers and network businesses along with the AEMO work together to identify opportunities to fully test the operation of restart services so that more information is available to help fine-tune the procurement process. For example, it may be possible to perform comprehensive tests of restart services when associated transmission elements are being returned to service following a planned outage.

Mr Henderson said this standard may be reviewed again by the Panel if the power system changes or if the availability of system restart ancillary services changes in the future