In September, energy market operator AEMO issued a warning for summer.
A "heightened risk of significant unserved energy" — widely experienced as blackouts — was forecast particularly in Victoria and South Australia.
Now summer is over, how did the energy market fare? The ABC invited energy experts to identify noteworthy events and trends from the past three months.
Tony Wood, energy program director at the Grattan Institute
"Despite the doomsayers, we seem to have survived the summer without major blackouts. The lessons of the previous year and the focus of all parties were helped by the absence of major concurrent high demand and outages.
"Wholesale power prices have certainly risen. Some of this is due to higher costs, like the closure of a low-cost plant and high-cost gas."
Josh Frydenberg, Energy Minister
"On hot days and at times of peak demand, wind generation cannot always be relied upon, especially without the proper backup and storage."
"With the closure of the Northern and Hazelwood power stations, gas is setting the price of electricity more often, and gas is more expensive than coal in terms of the cost of generation."
Mark Butler, Labor energy spokesman
"The Tesla battery responded very quickly on December 14th to maintain frequency of the grid."
"The South Australian Government announced the virtual power plant, and it received a strong reception."
Marija Petkovic, managing director of Energy Synapse
"Victoria set a new record for electricity prices in January. Both coal and wind power contributed to this."
"Queensland broke the record for the highest ever electricity demand three days in a row due to the heatwave."
Simon Holmes à Court, adviser to University of Melbourne Energy Transition Hub
"In preparation for summer, both Victoria and South Australia installed a fleet of diesel generators … AEMO has confirmed that neither bank of generators were run to support the network over the entire summer.
"At 4.27pm on 18 January, Unit 1 at Victoria's Loy Yang B tripped, instantly withdrawing 528MW of much-needed power on the second-hottest weekday afternoon this summer. The wholesale energy price increased from under $90 per megawatt hour to almost $13,000."
Geoff Eldridge, former transmission network engineer and founder of Nemlog.com.au
"Temperatures on Sunday 28 January, the final day of the Australian Tennis Open, were in the mid-30's … being the tail end of an Australia Day long weekend and the end of school holidays, Melbourne's residential distribution networks were tested as the Australian Open final progressed and there were a number of supply disruptions due to overloads in local substations."
