NSW hosts best performing wind farms as market keeps eye on Liddell coal closure

New South Wales was host to half of the best performing wind farms in Australia in the month of March, helping the country’s biggest grid produce more power from wind and solar than any other state.

According to industry consultant Rystad Energy, NSW generated 1010 gigawatt hours of electricity from wind (492GWh) and large scale solar (518GWh) in March.

While that put it on top of the rankings in terms of output, in terms of market share of large scale wind and solar (15.8 per cent), it was well behind South Australia (46.6 pct) and Victoria (23.8 per cent). Those figures do not include rooftop solar.

Acciona’s Gunning wind farm north of Canberra (pictured above) was the best performing wind asset in the country in March, with a capacity factor of 43.7 per cent, which turns out to be much higher than the capacity factor of the last three remaining units at the Liddell coal generator, which peaked at 38 per cent.

Those three units will be closed this month, ostensibly removing nine per cent of the state’s generation capacity, although it has been a long time since the ageing and decrepit facility has been operating at anywhere near its full capacity.

The other best performing wind assets in Australia in march were found in Western Australia, where APA Group’s Badingarra wind farm delivered a capacity factor of 43.7 per cent, and the Biala wind farm in NSW (41.4 per cent).

In all, NSW played host to five of the top ten wind assets in the month, while Tasmania hosted three and W.A. another two.