The Australian Energy Market Operator runs the markets that set your electricity price. Here is what it does across the NEM and WEM, plus the data it makes public.
AEMO is the Australian Energy Market Operator. It is a company limited by guarantee, with government and industry members, and it has operated Australia’s main energy markets since 2009. Its job is to match electricity supply with demand in real time, keep the power system secure, run the markets that set wholesale prices and plan the transmission the grid will need.
AEMO operates two electricity markets and several gas markets:
Region IDs: NSW1, VIC1, SA1, QLD1, TAS1 (NEM) and WA1 (WEM).
In the NEM, AEMO runs a gross pool. Every 5 minutes it dispatches generators to meet demand, cheapest bid first, and the price of the last unit needed to clear demand in each region sets that interval’s dispatch price. The WEM follows the same merit-order idea on a 30-minute cycle. AEMO also publishes forward-looking forecasts, from 5-minute and pre-dispatch through to multi-year outlooks, so the market can see what is coming.
AEMO is one of the most data-rich market operators in the world. Through NEMWEB it publishes dispatch and pre-dispatch prices, generation by unit, interconnector flows, FCAS prices, constraints, market notices, reserve outlooks (PASA), the annual Electricity Statement of Opportunities and the Integrated System Plan. The data is open under AEMO’s copyright permissions, but it arrives as raw files that are hard to use without tooling.
What does AEMO stand for?
AEMO is the Australian Energy Market Operator. It operates Australia’s main electricity and gas markets and is responsible for keeping the power system secure.
What markets does AEMO operate?
AEMO runs the National Electricity Market (NEM) across New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia and Tasmania. It also runs the Wholesale Electricity Market (WEM) in Western Australia and gas markets including the Short Term Trading Market and the Victorian Declared Wholesale Gas Market.
Is AEMO a government body?
AEMO is a company limited by guarantee. Its members are a mix of governments and industry participants, so it is independent of any single retailer or generator while working closely with energy ministers and regulators.
Where does AEMO publish its data?
Most operational data is published through NEMWEB, AEMO’s file-based distribution system, as ZIP and CSV files. gridIQ ingests these feeds and turns them into live dashboards and an AI analyst.
gridIQ ingests AEMO NEM and WEM data every few minutes and turns it into live prices, generation mix, carbon intensity and Watt, an AI analyst you can ask plain-language questions.
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