South Australia hits stunning new high in race to renewables-only grid

South Australia continues its record-breaking run on renewables, with wind and solar contributing just over 85% (85.4%) of the state’s electricity demand for the month of December.

University of New South Wales energy system analyst Dylan McConnell says this is “comfortably a new monthly record” for South Australia, surpassing the state’s previous record of 76%, set in December 2021.

McConnell says renewable energy also contributed almost 80% of South Australia’s demand for the whole quarter (79.2%), making it the highest quarter on record, too.

South Australia – already leading the world with its share of wind and solar – is poised to become the first grid of its size to operate without synchronous generation within the next few years, according to the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO).

And it’s December record is hardly surprising, considering the state’s world-first a run of more than 10 consecutive days in that month when the average production of wind and solar accounted for 100 per cent of local demand.

As RenewEconomy reported at the time, no other gigawatt scale grid in the world has come close to this amount of “variable renewable energy”, or for such a long time.

McConnell, then, put South Australia’s December stretch of more than 100 per cent renewables at 10 days, 18 hours and 45 minutes, with the mean price over that period averaging minus $3.26/MWh.

Over that period, data shows rooftop solar contributed a massive 26.3 per cent – and dominated daytime production, sometimes up to 92 per cent of local demand.

The biggest contribution, however, came from wind energy, with a 67.6 per cent share over that time, while large scale solar – heavily curtailed because of negative prices and the impact of rooftop PV – contributed just 6.1 per cent.