South Australia potential wind and solar reaches record 264 pct of demand on Saturday

South Australia has reached another new landmark in the transition to wind and solar, setting a new record for “potential” wind and solar – a stunning 264 per cent of state electricity demand.

The number – reached at 1420 AEST on Saturday is a combination of dispatched renewables, which made up 137.5 per cent of state demand – with the excess either exported to Victoria or stored in batteries – and “curtailed” wind and solar, which on its own reached a phenomenal 126.5 per cent.

According to Geoff Eldridge from data collectors and energy advisory firm GPE NEMLog, the new record for potential wind and solar is a rise of 29.4 per cent from the previous record of of 234.6 per cent set on September 3.

It points, of course, to the growing need for more storage capacity – although batteries accounted for up to eight  of native demand at appropriate times on Saturday, and underlines the need for the new link to NSW that should be complete in a couple of years, and more grid demand, such as hydrogen electrolysers.

The growth of wind and solar, and the significant excess, is one of the reasons why South Australia is committing nearly $600 million towards the creation of the world’s biggest green hydrogen electrolyser facility (250MW) , and the biggest hydrogen generation plant (200 MW) to be build near Whyalla.

Energy minister Tom Koutsantonis says green hydrogen is key to using excess wind and solar to value added products such as green iron, which he says could become a major export potential for the state, and solving issues such as minimum demand levels on the grid, and providing reserves for evening demand peaks.

South Australia is well ahead of the rest of the Australian grid both in terms of actual renewable generation (and average of more than 70 per cent of the last 12 months), and in “potential” renewable output.

The Australian Energy Market Operator, in its latest Quarterly Energy Dynamics update of the main grid, notes that the NEM as a whole reached a new peak in “potential renewables” of 98.6 per cent at 1230 AEST on Saturday, September 16 this year.

This record is based on a 30-minute interval – as are all AEMO benchmarks – and as RenewEconomy wrote at the time, the 5-minute interval showed a peak of 101.7 per cent of renewable potential.