Yesterday a new record was set for variable renewable energy (VRE) across the National Electricity Market (NEM) with 11.7 gigawatts (GW) from large scale solar, wind and rooftop solar PV recorded, contributing 46.5% of total energy used for those 30 minutes.
The previous record was 11.3 GW back in November 2019.
“Yesterday’s new record of instantaneous renewable generation highlights the changing supply mix throughout the electricity market,” Alex said. “In the last six months, we’ve commissioned five new wind and solar farms with a generation capacity of 580 megawatts (MW) that are feeding into the NEM, and another seven committed projects working towards construction of a further 1,785 MW."
This new record comes hot on the heels of AEMO’s recently
released 2020
Integrated System Plan (ISP), which forecasted that more than 26 GW of new
VRE is needed to replace coal-fired generation, with 63 per cent of coal-fired
generation set to retire by 2040.
The 2020 ISP stated that the least-cost transition of the
NEM will be a highly diverse portfolio consisting of Distributed Energy
Resources (DER) and VRE and supported by multiple dispatchable resources.
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