“Epic stuff:” Renewables reach 84 pct share of world’s biggest isolated grid

The renewable records continue to fall in Western Australia’s South-West Interconnected System – the world’s biggest isolated grid – with the share reaching a new high of 84 per cent on Monday.

The new “instantaneous” benchmark was reached in the 1030-1100 interval on Monday, December 12, and beat the previous record of 81.4 per cent reached just a week earlier.

n December 12th at 10:30am we hit 84% renewables, with 59% from rooftop solar, 19.5% from wind and 5.5% from large scale solar. Not surprisingly the balancing price was negative for most of the daylight hours.

The share of distributed PV, mostly rooftop solar, reached 59 per cent, while there was a 19 per cent share from wind, and a 5.5 per cent share from utility scale solar.

The W.A. grid has been featuring record low output from its thermal generators, with insufficient coal supplies pulling one 300MW facility out of the market, and a gas leak from a Santos pipeline creating problems for gas generation.

The 84 per cent share was noted on the AEMO dashboard for the WA market, although not yet confirmed.

The growing share of renewables in WA is notable because it is a gigawatt scale isolated grid with no interconnectors to other markets that could help it out.

“Epic stuff,” noted renewable energy services provider GridCog in an LinkedIn post. “Challenges lie ahead as the thermal generation that currently provides firming is retired (see Neoen’s monster battery announcement), but it’s incredible to see how fast things are happening.”

Neoen has just won approval for a battery of up to 4GWh to be located in W.A. although the only battery currently under construction on that grid is a 100MW/200MWh facility near Kwinana.