Concerns over electricity supply have been eased for ACT households this evening, with the market operator advising network providers supply was expected to meet demand.
The alert for residents of the ACT and NSW has been downgraded with the Australian Market Energy Operator saying supply was being more effectively managed since it took control of the energy market on Wednesday.
Peter Billing, General Manager at Evoenergy, said the ACT network service provider had been advised the lack-of-reserve level three conditions hadn't eventuated on Thursday.
Mr Billing said it was understood a hydropower station had come online and a coal-fired power station had also been able to provide more energy to the national market.
"Basically there's been more supply come into the market and also conditions have softened a little bit as far as load goes," he said.
ACT residents were asked to limit their electricity use on Wednesday evening to ease pressure on the network, the market operator's first point of intervention when it comes to consumption.
Should the situation worsen, the next step for the market operator is to advise Evoenergy to limit usage of its major energy consumers.
If supply constraints continued, the energy market regulator would be advising Evoenergy to cut electricity supply to ACT suburbs for periods of time.
Mr Billing said there was about 10 customers in the ACT they would approach to either reduce usage or cut usage completely.
"It could be places like pumping stations and those sorts of things that are quite heavy energy uses," he said.
Mr Billing said if it gets to the point in the future where the market operators cannot deal with the shortfall through limiting the use of big consumers, electricity will be cut to households.
Mr Billing said the most likely outcome would be suburbs going offline for half hour or one-hour blocks at a time.
"We've never gotten to that stage over the last few days, but we were at the kind of prelude to that happening," he said.
"So we were on that high alert, but it seems at this stage that's unlikely in the next week now."
