September 2020 has gone down in history as the first month on Australia’s National Electricity Market with a more than 30% share of electricity coming from renewables, according to a series of charts posted on Twitter on Thursday.
In NEM stats shared here by Windlab’s David Osmond and then re-tweeted with some added detail by energy analyst Simon Holmes à Court, total renewable electricity share reached 30.4% across in September, while both wind and solar notched up new monthly supply records, at 13% and 10.8% respectively.
But while renewables generation increased by 819GWh, or 6.4%, compared with Q3 in 2019, fossil fuels went in the other direction. Coal power generation fell to a new minimum of 10,188GWh and a share of 65.4%. And the Morrison government favourite – gas – was “the biggest loser,” says as Holmes à Court points, “falling a whopping 18.7% to less than five per cent.
“Folks adamantly claiming that ‘more RE = more gas’ should find this embarrassing,” quipped Holmes à Court.
And, just for the record, South Australia recorded a share of wind and solar of 66 per cent of local generation in the month of September, a record. Oh, and the lights stayed on.
See also David Leitch’s latest analysis: Enough new wind and solar locked in to kill three coal generators by 2025
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