AEMO's System Management function, which transitioned from Western Power to AEMO on 1 July 2016, is a market participant in the Wholesale Electricity Market (WEM) and plays an important and special role in the market. Its primary responsibility, of ensuring the South West interconnected system (SWIS) is operated in a secure and reliable manner, is articulated in section 2.2.1 of the market Rules.

System Management’s core functions in the WEM include:

• Ensuring the power system is operated in a secure and reliable manner.
• Dispatch of market generators and demand side programs, and the activation of registered network control services, in accordance with the dispatch criteria.
• Scheduling dispatch of the Synergy Portfolio.
• Assessing system adequacy over short and medium timeframes.
• Coordinating with network operators for planning and activation of emergency load shedding plans.
• Assessing and approving market outages and commissioning plans, including approval of forced outage conversion to consequential outages.
• Determining ancillary service requirements, procurement and scheduling of ancillary services including black start capability, spinning reserve, load following service and load rejection service.
• Assessing applications from market participants for facility registration and de-registration.
• Developing market procedures and amendments for those tasks performed by System Management, such as dispatch of facilities in the balancing market.
• Providing information to market participants, including advice on system events via dispatch advisories, information relating to outages, and information relating to the short, medium and long term Projected Assessment of System Adequacy (PASA).
• Monitoring rule compliance from other market participants, in particular in relation to dispatch and system security issues.
• Providing information on power system security and reliability to the regulator.
• Capturing and providing data for settlement.

System Management has a key role in coordinating outage planning of all equipment in the SWIS identified on the Equipment List. This includes all registered generation facilities, the bulk transmission parts of the SWIS and other items necessary to manage power system security. It is System Management that ultimately approves or rejects outage applications. In certain circumstances, System Management also has the power to cancel approved outages or even recall facilities to service while on an approved outage.

System Management configures the transmission system of Western Power in real time to help achieve safe and reliable operation of the WEM. This may include directing Western Power to switch lines in and out of service and re-directing power flows via different parts of the network.

Current power system operation procedures can be found here.

To fulfill this obligation, System Management controls key technical characteristics of the power system such as frequency and voltage, through ancillary services.

Contact us

System Management Operations – call +61 8 9427 5943 or email wa.sm.operations@aemo.com.au

System Management Planning – call +61 8 9422 0397 or email wa.sm.planning@aemo.com.au