Graph of the Day: Record month for Australian wind energy

In our Graph of the Day on Monday, we looked again at the record-breaking week of August 10-18 for wind energy in Australia. As it turns out, the entire month of August 2013 was a record breaker, all round – for the National Electricity Market (NEM), and for the individual states of South Australia, Victoria, Tasmania and NSW.

As the graph below shows, NEM demand generated by wind in the month of August reached a record high of 8 per cent (up from 5.7 per cent in July), while in South Australia, demand generated by wind during hit a smashing new high of 37.9 per cent, up from 31.2 per cent in August last year.

Tasmania notched up a record 11 per cent of demand generated by wind (up from 7.5 per cent in July), NSW hit a new high of 1.8 per cent (up from 1.5 per cent in August 2012) and Victoria reached 7.9 per cent (up from 5.4 per cent in July) – enough to power the stadium lights at the Melbourne Cricket Ground continuously for the next 44 years, the Clean Energy Council says.

All up, the Clean Energy Council says Australia’s wind farms generated 1024 gigawatt-hours in August. And according to the CEC’s infographic below, that is enough wind generated energy to make more than 6 billion (6,144,000,000) toasted sandwiches using your average sandwich press – enough for each person on Earth. Pretty handy. Here’s what else it could do…