Generation record caps stunning year of Australian solar milestones

Australia’s stunning solar year that was 2021 ended with a final flourish, after December delivered a record for utility-scale PV generation, surpassing 1,000GWh in a month for the first time to reach a total of 1,263GWh.

The new record was marked by Rystad senior analyst David Dixon, who said on LinkedIn that the bulk of the big solar power over the month had been generated in New South Wales, where output totalled 577GWh.

Readers may recall that NSW set the scene for some big numbers at the very start of the month, when it smashed the record for solar output twice in two days breaking through the 2GW barrier for the first time.

As RenewEconomy reported at the time, the state’s 32 grid-scale solar farms reached a new peak of 1827MW at around 1.40pm on Wednesday December 01, and then jumped to 2,092MW at 11.05am AEST on Thursday (December 02).

The records fell as the 90MW (AC) solar facility near Wagga Wagga, the Sebastapol project owned by FRV, began its commissioning process after Beon Energy Solutions completed its testing – and with a number of further PV projects poised to join the grid.

After NSW, Queensland was the next biggest contributor to the new record, with that state’s large-scale solar projects generating a total for the month of 368GWh, according to Rystad, followed by Victoria with 183GWh.

At the project level, Dixon says the best performing utility PV asset for the month was – for the second month in a row – SUN Energy’s 100MW Merredin solar farm in Western Australia, with a capacity factory of 45%.

Merredin was followed by Neoen’s Griffith solar farm, in southern NSW, with a capacity factor of 42%, and then Wirsol Energy /Edify Energy’s Gannawarra solar farm in Victoria, which recorded a capacity factor of 41%.

For wind power, Western Australia was the star of the show in December, with six of the top 10 assets located in that state, according to Dixon.

APA Group’s Badgingarra wind farm was the top performing wind farm (55% CF), followed by Iberdrola Walkaway wind farm (53% CF) and First Sentier Investors / Windlab’s Kiata wind farm (51% CF).