New details here… Tumut 3 is Snowy Hydro, which is owned by the...
Aidan Morrison@FootnotesGuy
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Oct 21, 2026
~1 min read
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New details here…
Tumut 3 is Snowy Hydro, which is owned by the federal government.
And this is extremely aggressive bidding behaviour, which exploited vulnerabilities and technicalities in the market to grab a bucket of money from consumers, almost certainly contributing to the seriousness of this price spike.
They bid at deeply negative prices, ensuring they got switched on, ramping up counterprice flows, which they would know would lead to more constraints, leading to a severe price spike.
They they altered the rate at which they could ramp down their power. So once they got switched on (with an ultra-low bid) they used technical constraints to ensure they wouldn’t get switched off while prices were high.
Oh for some serious energy journalists. What an epic story.
Heavy sigh.
Are taxpayers happy with their investment gaming the market to return, pushing up prices to produce super profits to Snowy Hydro?
I guess that’s how Snowy 2.0 gets funded. To save the embarrassment of the federal government shovelling cash into the entity, everyone looks the other way while they play an ultra-aggressive game to gouge the market.
Tumut 3 is Snowy Hydro, which is owned by the federal government.
And this is extremely aggressive bidding behaviour, which exploited vulnerabilities and technicalities in the market to grab a bucket of money from consumers, almost certainly contributing to the seriousness of this price spike.
They bid at deeply negative prices, ensuring they got switched on, ramping up counterprice flows, which they would know would lead to more constraints, leading to a severe price spike.
They they altered the rate at which they could ramp down their power. So once they got switched on (with an ultra-low bid) they used technical constraints to ensure they wouldn’t get switched off while prices were high.
Oh for some serious energy journalists. What an epic story.
Heavy sigh.
Are taxpayers happy with their investment gaming the market to return, pushing up prices to produce super profits to Snowy Hydro?
I guess that’s how Snowy 2.0 gets funded. To save the embarrassment of the federal government shovelling cash into the entity, everyone looks the other way while they play an ultra-aggressive game to gouge the market.
Ben Beattie@EnergyWrapAU
Odd dispatch outcomes for the NSW wind fleet coincident with the price spike.