Milestone – Australia renewables output hits 9GW for first time

This weekend brought the first days of summer, some searing temperatures in Queensland and some mini-tornadoes in South Australia – and also a record level of production from renewable energy in Australia’s main grid.

This graph above, courtesy of Dylan McConnell from the Climate and Energy College in Melbourne, and sourced from their OpenNem data feed, shows that the level of renewables was above 9,000 megawatts (nine gigawatts) for the first time on Saturday.

This occurred at midday, when the share of renewables in the NEM hit 39.7 per cent. Even without hydro, the contribution of large scale wind, large scale solar, and rooftop solar nearly beat 9GW for the first time, and on Sunday it did.

Another milestone was reached in Victoria, where also for the first times, according to McConnell, the state’s demand was met 50 per cent by renewables.

Its total share of generation at the time was around 40 per cent, but that’s because brown coal didn’t change its output – so the excess capacity was exported.