On 2 December 2010, the Australian Energy Market Commission (Commission) gave notice under sections 102 and 103 of the National Electricity Law (NEL) of the making of the Final Rule determination and Rule as made for the Rule change request "Amendments to PASA-related Rules".

The Rule as made amended amended the Medium Term Projected Assessment of System Adequacy process to allow reserves to be shared across multiple National Electricity Market regions.

Short Term PASA (STPASA) is a seven-day half-hourly reserve outlook which AEMO publishes every two hours. Medium Term PASA (MTPASA) is a two-year daily peak reserve outlook which AEMO publishes at least once per week. According to AEMO, Registered Participants use this information to make decisions about supply, demand and the scheduling of planned outages in the National Electricity Market (NEM). AEMO uses this information as a trigger to intervene in the market to address forecast reserve shortfalls.

Under clause 3.7.1 of the Rules, AEMO is responsible for administering the STPASA and MTPASA processes. These are comprised of information collection, analysis, and disclosure of short term and medium term power system security prospects to Scheduled Generators, Semi-Scheduled Generators and Market Participants.

AEMO sought to amend clauses 3.7.2(c)(2) and 3.7.2 (f)(1) of the Rules to remove its obligation to prepare and publish "for each region" the reserve requirements and load forecasts used in the MTPASA. AEMO submitted that the "proposed Rule change would allow AEMO to use reserve requirements that apply across multiple regions so that MTPASA can more optimally share medium term capacity reserves between those regions in accordance with the Reliability Standard." AEMO considered that this would improve the quality of the MTPASA information.

AEMO also sought to address a number of inconsistencies between the current design of the PASA processes and the relevant Rules provisions. AEMO considered these issues to be minor.

On 3 June 2010, the Commission published a notice under section 95 of the NEL to commence initial consultation on this Rule change proposal.  Accordingly, the Commission invited written submissions or comments from any person or body in relation to the proposed Rule by 2 July 2010.  The Commission also published a Consultation Paper to provide guidance to stakeholders in preparing first round submissions to inform the draft Rule determination.

On 9 September 2010, the Commission gave notice under section 99 of the NEL of the making of the draft Rule determination and draft Rule for this Rule change proposal.  The Commission invited written submissions or comments from any person or body in relation to the draft Rule determination and draft Rule by 22 October 2010. 

All enquiries in relation to this project should be addressed to Rory Campbell on (02) 8296 7800