Renewables supply more than 30pct of NEM for second month in a row

Australia’s National Electricity Market has delivered its second month in a row of more than 30 per cent renewable energy, with October following up on the milestone achievement set in September.

As RenewEconomy reported here, September 2020 went down in history as the first month on Australia’s NEM with a more than 30% share of electricity coming from renewables.

New OpenNEM data shared on Twitter on Monday illustrates that the September achievement was not a once-off, but could be the new benchmark for a grid adding thousands of megawatts of new large-scale solar and wind each year.

Wind energy was the biggest source of renewables, with a 10.8 per cent share in the month, followed by rooftop solar (8.3 per cent), hydro (7..4 per cent) and utility scale solar (3.9 per cent).

Importantly, while coal remains the dominance source of supply in the NEM, with just short of 63 per cent, it now beats renewables by just a factor of two, compared to the factor of six in 2016,

The October NEM data was revealed at the same time as the Open NEM crew revealed it had extended its reach to include Western Australia’s South West Interconnected System, or SWIS, which is that state’s main grid, and is completely separate from the NEM.

The Open NEM W.A. network monitoring coincides with that state’s own milestone event, with the combined output of wind and solar and other renewable energy sources overtaking coal and gas for the first time in the month of October. You can read more about that here.