Generation & Fuel Mix

Overview

The Generation & Fuel Mix section provides real-time and historical visibility into how electricity is being produced across the NEM. Data is sourced from AEMO’s Dispatch SCADA feed (updated every 5 minutes) and processed through the gold.nem_generation_by_fuel table.

Generation Categories

The NEM generation mix is tracked across these fuel types:

Fuel Type	Technology	Typical NEM Share
Black Coal	NSW, QLD thermal	25–35%
Brown Coal	VIC brown coal	10–15%
Gas (CCGT)	Combined cycle gas turbine	5–10%
Gas (OCGT)	Open cycle (peaker) gas turbine	2–5%
Hydro	Snowy, TAS hydro	5–10%
Wind	Utility-scale wind farms	10–20%
Solar (Utility)	Large-scale solar farms	5–15%
Solar (Rooftop)	Behind-the-meter rooftop	5–15%
Battery	Grid-scale BESS	1–3%
Pumped Hydro	Wivenhoe, Tumut 3	1–3%
Biomass	Sugar mill, landfill gas	<1%

Dashboard Pages

Generation Mix Dashboard (`/front-office/generation-mix`)

Live donut chart: current NEM-wide generation by fuel type
Stacked area chart: generation by fuel over time (configurable 1h to 1y)
Carbon intensity indicator: gCO2/kWh in real time
Renewable penetration percentage: percentage of demand met by renewables (wind + solar + hydro)

Regional Generation Breakdown (`/front-office/generation-regional`)

Side-by-side comparison of generation mix by region
Filter by fuel type to see regional distribution
SA1 renewable penetration is typically the highest (often >100% momentarily)

DUID-Level Dispatch (`/front-office/duid-dispatch`)

Individual generating unit dispatch data
Search by DUID, station name, or fuel type
Current output vs registered capacity percentage
Bid stack position indicator

Facility Registry (`/front-office/facilities`)

Complete list of all registered NEM generating facilities
Source: OpenNEM facility data + AEMO DUDETAILSUMMARY
Includes: capacity (MW), fuel type, first dispatch date, operator, region
Filter and sort by any column

DUID Data

A Dispatchable Unit Identifier (DUID) uniquely identifies each generating unit registered with AEMO. Energy Copilot tracks 400+ DUIDs across the NEM.

-- Query current generation for coal units in NSW1
SELECT
    duid,
    station_name,
    fuel_type,
    current_output_mw,
    registered_capacity_mw,
    ROUND(current_output_mw / registered_capacity_mw * 100, 1) AS utilisation_pct
FROM energy_copilot.gold.nem_generation_by_fuel
WHERE region_id = 'NSW1'
  AND fuel_type IN ('Black Coal')
  AND interval_datetime = (SELECT MAX(interval_datetime) FROM energy_copilot.gold.nem_generation_by_fuel)
ORDER BY current_output_mw DESC;

Dispatch SCADA Integration

AEMO publishes Dispatch SCADA data (generation output per DUID) every 5 minutes through NEMWEB. Pipeline 01_nemweb_ingest.py downloads and processes this data:

NEMWEB SCADA CSV (5-min)
    │
    ▼ pipeline 01: DLT Autoloader
bronze.raw_dispatch_scada
    │
    ▼ (dedup, validate)
silver.dispatch_scada_clean
    │
    ▼ (aggregate by fuel type, pivot)
gold.nem_generation_by_fuel

The Gold table is partitioned by interval_date and has Change Data Feed enabled for the AI agent’s tool calls.

API Examples

Fetch Generation Mix

GET /api/generation/latest?region=NSW1

# Response
{
  "timestamp": "2025-03-21T05:30:00Z",
  "region_id": "NSW1",
  "total_generation_mw": 8250,
  "renewable_pct": 18.4,
  "carbon_intensity_gco2_kwh": 710,
  "fuel_mix": {
    "black_coal": 4820,
    "gas_ccgt": 820,
    "gas_ocgt": 145,
    "hydro": 320,
    "wind": 890,
    "solar_utility": 520,
    "solar_rooftop": 680,
    "battery": 55
  }
}

Fetch Fuel Mix History

GET /api/generation/history?region=QLD1&fuel_type=wind&start=2025-03-14&end=2025-03-21

Gold Table Schema

-- gold.nem_generation_by_fuel
DESCRIBE energy_copilot.gold.nem_generation_by_fuel;
-- interval_datetime   TIMESTAMP  -- 5-min interval (UTC)
-- interval_date       DATE       -- partition key
-- region_id           STRING     -- NEM region
-- fuel_type           STRING     -- generation fuel category
-- generation_mw       DOUBLE     -- total generation (MW)
-- duid_count          INT        -- number of DUIDs in this fuel/region bucket
-- capacity_mw         DOUBLE     -- total registered capacity for this bucket
-- utilisation_pct     DOUBLE     -- generation / capacity * 100

Carbon Intensity Calculation

Carbon intensity (gCO2/kWh) is calculated using emissions factors from gold.emissions_factors:

Fuel Type	Emissions Factor (kgCO2/MWh)
Black Coal	920
Brown Coal	1,180
Gas (CCGT)	490
Gas (OCGT)	700
Wind	11
Solar (utility)	45
Solar (rooftop)	45
Hydro	24
Battery	0 (dispatch only)