Late night ramble… it’s Senate Estimates in a few hours. There’s just so much that could/should be tackled. Hard to know where to start. But having AEMO there makes it quite special. They don’t normally appear. So here are some thoughts.

I think this is evidence of our government-owned energy generator, Snowy Hydro, unethically gouging consumers. It might be legal. Maybe. But I think it's wrong. Electricity consumers and taxpayers should be furious. I pulled this data with the help of AI. This would be days or weeks of work a few years ago. Now getting all the data in the ideal format to understand takes just minutes. Much harder is figuring out what it actually means. I should hasten to say, I'm pro-market enough to hate it when people rail against 'price-gouging'. Provided the market isn't rigged, there's nothing wrong with sellers charging what they can. Prices are important signals. If the market's functioning properly, it will bring in new supply from competitors, and/or allocate limited supplies to those with greatest need. But in this case, I think the actions taken by Snowy Hydro show absolutely masterful exploitation of failures in our energy market, in particular transmission constraints and poor system design, which competitors have no means of correcting through new supply. Because the supply is fixed by a badly designed transmission build-out, competition is held away. The damning thing here is the change in the ramp-down rates. That's what makes the whole thing go from smart, and brutally self-interested manipulation of the market, to something that seems to me to be dishonest. That, set in the context of the counterprice flows, and the market intervention by @AEMO_Energy to impose constraints that would affect other competitors ability to provide power in the market. You see, the first thing you'd think of for re-bidding behaviour that's potentially profit-maximising, and hurting consumers, is raising your bids to higher prices, when you know that there's a shortage. That's child's play compared to what's going on here. At rebid 6, Snowy drops their bid down to negative values for half their capacity. (See green block start on bottom panel) Ie, "I'll pay people to take away my power". Surely lower bids helps lower prices right? Usually right, but here it's wrong. And this is where Snowy Hydro's market team shows they're true ninjas. They know that there's a bottle-neck so a bunch of power in Southern NSW can't reach Sydney, and push down prices at the reference point. So they bid super-low. Negative $1000. The minimum. That guarantees they get dispatched. The plebs in the wind-farms trying to get every MW they can out at a positive price would never take that kind of risk. So they bid negative, massively, to ensure that their power is flowing to market ahead of any other generator in Southern NSW. But that's only the opening move, and Snowy Hydro are thinking many steps ahead already. They would know the network well enough to know that turning their own pumps on in this part of the network will force power over the border into Victoria against price signals. Victoria has negative prices, NSW positive, at 13:40. Prior to this point, before Tumut 3 turns on, a bit of power is flowing from Vic to NSW, which is helpful. Their negative prices helps bid down NSW's positive prices. Which is good. Until... Tumut 3 turns on nearly 900MW in far-South NSW with their crazy-low bid. Then power starts flowing the wrong way, from positive prices to negative, over the Vic border. Promising generators they'd get paid to generate, then promising Victorian consumers they'd get paid to consumer NSW's excess. This "negative residue" starts to build up slowly at first. But as prices rise in NSW, as the afternoon heat builds, it speeds up a little. Then comes Snowy Hydro's next big move. Rebid 7 in the table. They push their entire 1.78GW generation capacity down to the floor price, so it gets dispatched. And this pushes a mass of electricity across the border at a pretty big counter-price delta. Snowy Hydro knows perfectly well what this does. It pushes the cumulative residues over a level where AEMO has a policy to intervene, imposing a constraint on the market to stop these negative residues building up too high, racking up bills for high priced generation in one state that no-one in the other state where the power landed agreed to pay for. Effectively the idea is to 'clamp' the interconnector to stop power flowing the wrong way across it. But you can't actually stop electrons by clamping the interconnector. You have to adjust the pushes and pulls of generators and loads to prevent the electric fields pushing power the wrong way. That means directing generators to switch off. And here's the real cunning in Snowy Hydro's plan. Because they had so obviously caused the mayhem by pushing nearly 2GW into the grid in a place where the power flowed over the border away from where it was really needed, surely AEMO's new constraints to prevent that flow would switch that generator (Tumut 3) straight back off? It was dispatching nothing an hour earlier. Surely they get switched off? Anticipating this, right back at rebid 6 Snowy had adjusted their ramp-down rates registered with the market operator. This is the step which crosses a line in my mind. Because I strongly suspect that nothing at all changed in the technical capability of Tumut 3 that meant that it couldn't be ramped down as fast as they had told the market they could do minutes before, and would tell the market they could do again just a few hours later. The reasons given mention nothing about technical problems. So this is done as a market move. They know this can make them money, but the truth is that their machinery could ramp at the same (high) rate throughout this episode, I assume. But by lowering their ramp rate down so far, to just 18MW/minute, they effectively meant that AEMO couldn't turn them off. They can only be gradually ramped down. They should've been the first ones turned off to prevent the counterprice flows, but they'd manipulated their ramp so that they couldn't be switched off. Consequently, all the other generators in Southern NSW got switched off in preference. And this drove prices sky-high, because Sydney needed energy. Prices reached over $20,000/MW in a couple of increments soon after. And, apparently, because the most badly positioned generator (Tumut 3) that was pumping out energy near the Victorian border couldn't be ramped down quickly, enormous 'negative residues' accrued, with a couple million in the 5 mins after AEMO notified the market of the constraint to (attempt to) limit the counterprice flows. And, more than a million ten minutes later. These 'residues' just get lumped onto network charges, and end up being paid by consumers. So it's pretty clear that Snowy Hydro's re-bid limiting the ramp rate caused those additional negative residues to arrive, hurting consumers directly. But also very likely, though there are few more moving parts involved and hence just slightly harder to say with certainty, the bidding behaviour here, which triggered the market intervention to clamp the interconnector to Victoria, almost certainly contributed to the price volatility reaching such extreme peaks in NSW. That would be a much, much more significant cost to consumers, I've seen estimates from @EnergyWrapAU putting Snowy's windfall at around $15 million in one hot hour. So this I think crosses a line for me. Because the changed ramp-down rate is almost certainly made-up, reflecting nothing in their machinery at all, and because they knowingly caused bad outcomes for consumers on the way to getting paid that otherwise wouldn't have occurred (the counter-price flows for sure, and the price spike almost certainly) I don't think it's ethical behaviour for any generator, and certainly not one owned by taxpayers. I strongly suspect that if Snowy Hydro had left Tumut 3 with their bids as they were at 13:30, that the counterprice flows would have been far more moderate, possibly not triggering an intervention. And also NSW wind generators a little closer to Sydney would have done a better job meeting rising demand, and prices might have risen a bit, but to nothing like the extend that they actually did when they were forcibly switched off while Snowy Hydro was running Tumut 3 which was sending power the wrong way over the border into Victoria. Because they couldn't be switched off because of the manipulated ramp-rates.

It is extraordinary that NESO’s takeaway is that the core allegations made by the whistleblowers are unsubstantiated. As I’ve always said, the core allegation is that the electricity grid is not being run securely. In that respect, the Eversheds report is utterly damning. Not only does it say that renewables are making our grid more difficult to manage, but it says that several engineers in the control room profoundly disagree with NESO management’s claim that the grid was secure on 23rd June. There are multiple serious problems highlighted - from a culture of managers only wanting to hear ‘good news’, to poor record keeping, and, most concerningly, a reluctance to action complaints from engineers because of the need to 'keep stakeholders happy'. In other words, managers are failing to improve the security of our electricity grid because keeping Ministers in DESNZ happy is seen as more important. NESO's Chief Executive earns close to £1 million a year and the whole organisation costs the better half of a billion pounds to run. The country and billpayers deserve better. Government should be holding NESO to account, but instead, Ministers spent their time attacking me for raising the control room engineers' concerns and for making sure that any kind of investigation took place at all. If this had been washed under the carpet, then where would we be? A grid that is increasingly at risk and Ministers who, frankly, preferred to be asleep at the wheel rather than to do their jobs and protect our electricity supply. With regards to the engineers' concerns on corporate affairs and record keeping, Eversheds did not give a clean bill of health as NESO is claiming. They found that a culture of 'reputational sensitivity' does indeed affect operational decision-making, and recommended several changes to correct significant failures in record keeping practices. While I am on maternity leave, the Conservative team will continue to press the Government on this issue, because the bottom line is this: if we cannot trust NESO management to be honest about our ability to keep the lights on, how can they stay in their roles? I look forward to the release of Ofgem's investigation on whether the grid was run securely on 23rd June. But we do now know that the control room strongly feel that it wasn’t.

Looking forward to this event in Scone next week, Thursday 22nd of October. See link below. events.humanitix.com/form-au…

“They are pretty desperate” When asked about the Dirt File, Helen Haines said Labor were “pretty desperate” When you read over the requests put to journalists - in truth the PMs Office was very detailed and gave specific instructions to the press pack The media had clear expectations of the work the PM was looking for And it raises serious questions about media and government integrity, under Labor Story Credit: The Daily Mail

However, in the water-cooled reactor's defense, you can build smaller ones that can be shipped by rail or barge no problem. Thick pressure vessels double as physical protection and robust containment. Sodium metal becomes ~30,000x more radioactive than water during operation and must be kept hot to keep liquid with trace heating and insulation, challenging maintenance. Also, unlike sodium, water doesn't chemically burn when it touches air, water, or concrete. Pros and cons all around, and the full story is never simple. I'm a big sodium fan and very much love Aalo. But water-cooled reactors get beat up on wayyy too much for how good they are.

JUST IN: Germany and France join forces to officially scrap the EU's 2035 climate neutrality goal for cars.

Odd dispatch outcomes for the NSW wind fleet coincident with the price spike.

"RENEWABLES BEAT FOSSIL FUELS." HERE'S WHAT THE MINISTER LEFT OUT. Chris Bowen posted a chart this week. Last month, renewables generated more electricity on the national grid than fossil fuels. Only the second time in history. The numbers are right. Here's what the chart doesn't show you. A third of his "renewables" came off your roof. Solar made 4,780 GWh in September, and 2,975 GWh of that was rooftop panels Australians bought with their own money. Take that out, and the grid-scale renewables the government backs produced 5,880 GWh. Fossil fuels produced 8,762. They're still well ahead. Both "historic" months were in spring. October last year and September this year are low-demand months with mild weather, long days and strong wind. His chart only shows Septembers. Over the winter quarter, AEMO had renewables at 42.1%. And the margin? 8,855 to 8,762. That's 50.3% to 49.7%. His "national grid" doesn't include Western Australia. Here in WA, the renewable share went backwards last quarter, gas generation rose 27% and wholesale prices rose 30%. Now the part that matters at your kitchen table. On 10 days in September, the average market price for rooftop solar power went negative. There was more power than the market wanted. AEMO says wholesale prices on the national grid fell 47% in the June quarter. Yet the Bureau of Statistics says household electricity rose 22.4% in the year to June 2026. So if power is that much cheaper to make, why are you paying more for it? Where did the saving go? And where's the $275 off your bill the Prime Minister promised by 2025? "We've come a long way," says the Minister. Just not on your bill. Cold Hard Facts. Corrected when wrong. No misinformation. What's your thoughts…? Peter Lyndon-James 🇦🇺 Sources: Chris Bowen, LinkedIn, Oct 2026; Open Electricity Dispatch, October 2025; Open Electricity data via PV Tech, September 2026 solar output; AEMO Quarterly Energy Dynamics Q2 2026, 28 Jul 2026; ABS CPI June 2026; Albanese press conference, 3 Dec 2021.