How to Analyse the Profit Margin on Coal Burnt at a Station

This guide will show you how to use the coal burnt and spot revenue data in NEM-Review to trend the "average revenue per tonne of coal burnt" for any station.

There are two key steps:

  1. In NEM-Review: Trend the monthly revenue and coal burnt for a station
  2. In Excel: Use this data to calculate the monthly average revenue per tonne

1. Trend monthly revenue and coal burnt

  1. Open your NEM-Review Analysis Client
  2. Click the Trending Graph button
  3. In the Date Range selector, select from 1 August 2009 to 31 July 2010 (or any other date range that encompasses a series of full months).
  4. In the Data Series selector, tick Spot Revenue and Coal Burnt for the station you are interested in.
  5. In the Data Series Editor, set the resolution to Monthly and the Aggregation to Total.
  6. Click the Graph View button to take a look at the graph.
  7. Note the significant increase in revenue over the summer months, independent of the amount of coal burnt.

  8. Click the Table View button to view the data behind the graph.

2. Calculate monthly average revenue per tonne of coal burnt

  1. Still in table view, click the Hide Formatting button to show raw data without units or rounding.
  2. Note that the unformatted coal burnt data is in kg.

  3. Select the entire table by clicking in the grey space in the top left corner of the table (just left of the column headings).
  4. On your keyboard, press and hold Ctrl then c at the same time to copy the data to your clipboard.
  5. Open a new Excel spreadsheet, and paste the data into it (press Ctrl+v or right click a cell and select Paste).
  6. Column A should be the Settlement Date, column B the Spot Revenue, and column C the Coal Burnt. The first row will contain the column headings.

  7. In column D we will convert the coal burnt from kg to tonnes.
  8. In cell D2 enter the formula =C2/1000 (divide the value in column C by 1000). Copy this formula to the rest of the cells below in column D.

  9. In column E we will calculate the monthly average revenue per tonne coal.
  10. In cell E2 enter the formula =B2/D2 (spot revenue / tonnes coal burnt). Copy this formula to the rest of the cells below in column E.

  11. If you wish, you can format your data and create a graph using Excel.