• Outages and commissioning

  • In this section

  • Scheduled outages

    Under Chapter 3 of the market rules, System Management must assess outages that are on the equipment list and approve or reject those outages. Market participants us the Market Participant Interface (MPI) to enter information on equipment that needs to be taken out of service due to an outage, and to request for those outages to be approved.

    The Market Participant Interface can be accessed here. The guide for the Market Participant Interface can be accessed below.

    Occasionally a Market Participant may require access to the network to facilitate work as part of their facility outage. To coordinate switching of the Western Power Network, information on access to the Western Power Network can be found here.

    As part of outage transparency market rules, System Management must also publish all generator outage details in real time (as outage status information changes), and historical outage records. These can be accessed on the WEM data pages.

    Forced outages

    Under Chapter 3.21 of the market rules, participants must lodge forced outage information with System Management as soon as practicable.

    Market Participants may subsequently apply to System Management to convert their forced outage to a consequential outage, if they believe that the forced outage was as a result of either:

    • A forced outage to another rule participant's equipment.
    • A planned outage to a network operator.

    Information on the conversion process can be found in the Power System Operating Procedure – Facility Outages.

    Projected assessment of system adequacy (ST PASA and MT PASA)

    The projected assessment of system adequacy (PASA) is a forecasting study undertaken by System Management. It contains statistical load forecast information against projected available capacity figures (allowing for quantities of non-scheduled generation capacity based on historical figures).

    System Management undertakes two versions of the PASA. The short term PASA is published by AEMO every Thursday and is a three-week in advance forecast, and the medium term PASA is published by AEMO on the 15th day of every month and forecasts three years in advance. Reports for both versions can be found in the WEM data pages.

    Commissioning tests

    The Commissioning test plan template below must be completed for every request by a market participant to perform a Commissioning test.

    For commissioning test plans that include technical rule compliance tests or tests which might have an impact on the operation or performance of the power system, please note that test procedures must also be submitted to Western Power System Analysis for approval prior to testing, and to coordinate witnessing of tests if required.

    Refer to Western Power Technical Rules, in particular clauses 3.3.9, 4.1.3, 4.1.5 and 4.2.4, for further information.