A recent unplanned French nuclear plant outage at Golfech’s Unit 2 (1,310 MW) neatly demonstrates how the time advantage of Genscape’s PowerRT solution secures traders a head start for intraday trading. The PowerRT time advantage enables profitable trading strategies to capitalize on price spikes of 5-10 Euro/MWh, such as were seen around the time of this outage.
The outage took place on September 26, 2016 when French nuclear plant availability was already rather tight. At 2:10PM CET, Genscape’s proprietary monitors registered a significant drop in output of the Golfech nuclear power station. A PowerRT alert was immediately issued, followed shortly thereafter (at 2:18PM) by a frequency event alert triggered by the associated network frequency disturbance. This further confirmed the high probability of an unplanned single-unit outage event at Golfech.
Golfech consists of two identical units of 1,310 MW each and (as became clear later) Unit 2 had tripped. The relevant REMIT message was published by RTE, the transparency platform operator, at 2:28PM CET – a full 18 minutes after PowerRT users were already alerted about the event.
French power prices were already under pressure prior to the event, due to tight nuclear availability, and the day-ahead baseload price in France had cleared for this delivery day at 43.25 EUR/MWh. As a consequence of the outage, intraday traded hours H17 through H21 spiked to highs of 61-76 EUR/MWh (see chart).
This specific outage event is another example how PowerRT users can benefit from Genscape’s timely and insightful data ahead of the curve. The 10-18 minute time advantage allowed positions to be re-considered before the curve, leveraging the outage’s 5–10 Euro/MWh impact on intraday prices (H17 through H21).
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