Rooftop solar output records tumble again in southern states

Renewable energy records continue to tumble, this time it’s the turn of rooftop solar PV output and in the past couple of days it’s been happening in Australia’s most southern mainland states.

According to the energy data junkies at GPE NEMlog, the output of rooftop solar in South Australia reached a new peak of 1,746.7 megawatts (MW) at 1pm (AEST) on Tuesday, more than 50 MW above its previous record set earlier in the month.

Rooftop solar is particularly interesting in South Australia, which already leads the country and the world with a record share of more than 72 per cent wind and solar over the last 12 months (and 82 per cent in the last 30 days and 93 per cent in the last seven days).

At times, rooftop solar has produced enough electricity to meet all the state’s demand, and has supplied 21 per cent of all demand over the last 12 months, meaning its been around 50 per cent in the daytime.

Victoria is also experiencing a boom in rooftop solar, and an operational challenge to the two ageing brown coal generators that remain on its grid, and on Wednesday posted a new peak output from rooftop solar of 3,366 MW at 12 pm AEST. That was around 92 MW than the previous peak reached a week earlier.

Interestingly, large scale solar in Victoria also hit a new peak of 861 MW at 10.25 AEST on Wednesday morning, beating a previous peak set a month ago by around 31 MW.

Large scale solar also hit a new peak in NSW on Tuesday, of 3,170 MW at 9.45 AEST – courtesy, according to GPE’s Geoff Eldridge, of cloudy conditions in Sydney that subdued the output of much of the state’s rooftop PV capacity.

Just a week ago, rooftop solar hit a record market share across the whole grid of 49.3 per cent, and a day earlier the combined output of wind and solar (both rooftop and large scale) also hit a record peak of 73.4 per cent. So too, did the amount of both solar curtailment (5.4 GW) and the share of renewables produced and curtailed (107 per cent).