Newsletter
A monthly read on the Western Australian wholesale electricity market, written by hand from our own market data.
What it is
The WEM Energy Trader Newsletter is a monthly read on the Western Australian wholesale electricity market. Every issue is a point-in-time snapshot - the month as it actually closed, not a live dashboard view - covering what happened to prices and why, how last month's own forecast held up, what the system (weather, outages, market events) was doing, how demand and generation behaved, and the rolling 12-month forecast itself, month by month and half-hour by half-hour.
Every issue is written by hand. The reading of the month, the judgement calls and the commentary are an analyst's, working from the same public market data that runs our forecasting platform: five-minute dispatch and reference prices, the day-ahead STEM (Short Term Energy Market) clearing price, scheduled generation, generator outage records, Bureau of Meteorology weather observations, AEMO's public market-advisory notices, and the market's own published hedge-product prices. It is not an automated data dump, and it is not a rewrite of a market wrap someone else already published.
What's in every issue
Eleven sections, always in this order. Not every chart or table appears every month - where an input is thin for a given month, that section says so rather than guessing.
- Summary
The month in brief: average peak, off-peak and flat prices against the same month last year, whether last month's forecast ran high or low, and, when a generator retirement is material, an estimate of its price impact.
- Introduction
A short explainer of the forecast method behind the issue - transparent, refreshed every month, and built for retailer pricing and risk management.
- Energy price outcomes for the month
Where prices landed and when they spiked: the month's realised price against the day-ahead clearing price, day-by-day charts for weekdays and weekends measured against the forecast's expected range, and how this month's prices compare with a year ago.
- Forecast performance
Every issue scores last month's own forecast against several reference prices - built strictly on a point-in-time basis, from what was known before the month began, before it moves on to the year ahead.
- Power system conditions
Was anything unusual happening: a plain-terms digest of AEMO's public market notices, how the month's Perth weather compared with the years on record, and a generator-outage readout for the month.
- System load
How much generation the system actually needed this month, and whether it tracked the platform's rolling 12-month load forecast for weekdays and weekends.
- STEM trading
A worked illustration - not a service Eureka runs or a trade Eureka executes for anyone - of what forecast-driven day-ahead bidding would have achieved, settled against real-time prices.
- Synergy's standard products
A read on the state's published quarterly and annual hedge products, alongside our own forecast and how those products have traded historically.
- Refresh of the forecast
What changed in the 12-month forecast this month, and why - the manually-held assumptions behind it and how the price and load curves have moved since last issue.
- Annual energy price forecast
The headline deliverable: the full rolling 12-month price forecast, split weekday and weekend, month by month and half-hour by half-hour.
- Prospective energy prices beyond the forecast horizon
The longer view: where the market is headed as coal and gas capacity retires, read alongside the market's own multi-year hedge pricing as an independent view of where prices are expected to go.
What you get
- A monthly issue delivered by email, covering the calendar month just gone
- The archive in the dashboard, so you can read back issues alongside the current one
- A dated record - each issue stays exactly as written, so you can hold a decision against it later
Who it's for
Anyone who has to explain last month's electricity bill, or next year's budget, to someone who wasn't watching the market.
Illustrative only - a representative layout, not a real issue.