It was a hot and windy across Victoria on Sunday, which meant a great day for washing and drying bed sheets, and a great day for renewable energy generation in the state.
According to the chart below, supplied to RenewEconomy by Dylan McConnell from Energy Transition Hub, at 11:40am (NEM time) on October 29, wind and solar was producing ~2116 MW, which represented 37.3 per cent of generation in Victoria at the time.
Given the state was also exporting, says McConnell, renewable energy – mostly solar and wind – actually represented 44.6 per cent of local demand at the time. Not bad!
That is different to its average though. ITK’s David Leitch, in his weekly Know your NEM report, notes that Victoria has average 13 per cent renewables since the closure of Hazelwood seven months ago.
Many new wind and solar plants are under construction, which will start to replace some of that lost capacity. Victoria this month finally legislated its state target of 25 per cent renewables by 2020, and 40 per cent by 2030 – a target that may depend on how the National Energy Guarantee is structured, if it is put in place.
