AEMO conducted an expedited consultation to mark the last stage of its consultation under clause 3.9.2B(h) of the National Electricity Rules (NER) to revise the FCAS thresholds in the Automated procedures for identifying intervals subject to review (automated procedures).
The expedited consultation was to address recent experience of a significantly high number of false positive intervals identified as subject to review based on FCAS triggers, which were causing a high volume of automated market notices. AEMO had received strong feedback from industry on the issues being caused by this, and support for AEMO to expedite changes to the FCAS thresholds to relieve the issue. This included feedback AEMO received to an update on the automated procedures at the April 7 Electricity Wholesale Consultative Forum (EWCF).
At the time of the expedited consultation, AEMO was also aware of imminent scheduled line outages that could again cause a high volume of false positive intervals to be identified as subject to review based on the current FCAS triggers. Given this unique situation, and AEMO’s assessment that there would only be industry-wide benefits from this change, AEMO considered an expedited last-stage for this consultation was warranted.
Matter under consultation
- FCAS requirement (the RHS of a FCAS constraint equation) represents the largest credible contingency in a region.
- Under particular system conditions like a line outage, an interconnector can represent the largest credible contingency in a region.
- Recent import flows on QNI and export flows on the VIC1-NSW1 interconnector regularly exceed 800 MW.
- This means the FCAS requirement per market per region can be above 500 MW when interconnector/s are the largest credible contingency.
- This has been seen in March and April 2026, with several line outages in northern NSW causing extended periods of FCAS enablement above the 500 MW threshold, resulting in 6,650 automated market notices to have been sent out in 2026 (up to 7 April 2026).
AEMO recommended the FCAS thresholds be increased to 1,000 MW across all services and regions to reduce the high volume of false positives based on FCAS triggers and reduce the number of automated market notices.
Submissions were due to [email protected] by 5pm AEDT on 17 April 2026. Subject to submissions and subject to any further consultation that AEMO may have considered was warranted, AEMO then intended to implement the revised FCAS thresholds by updating the automated procedures. AEMO informed that a summary of stakeholder feedback will be published via AEMO Communications as part of this process.
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Scope
The scope of this expedited consultation was limited to the FCAS requirement thresholds in section 3 of the automated procedures. Further consultation will soon be commenced by AEMO on all trigger thresholds in the automated procedures, including subsequent opportunity to provide further input on the FCAS thresholds.
Submissions
AEMO received no submissions to this expedited consultation.
Procedure update
AEMO has updated the automated procedures to include the revised regional FCAS thresholds. The updated version of the automated procedures can be found below. The updated FCAS thresholds were implemented in AEMO’s systems on 28 April 2026.